Zhang Hemin is known as "father of pandas" and has devoted his life to the famous Chinese icon. Huang Zhiling

A few years ago, while Zhang guided 2-year-old female panda Ying Ying (Heroine) to climb a tree, the cub suddenly became irate and bit Zhang's calf.

"Danger! Hit its head!" a colleague shouted.

A panda can easily break a piece of bamboo as thick as a finger easily with its teeth. The cub would have released him immediately if Zhang had hit its head, but Zhang asked coworkers to open Ying Ying's mouth with their hands instead. Although his bone was not broken, Zhang was hospitalized for three months.

The unfriendly Ying Ying has since become a heroic mother with 15 cubs, 14 of which are twins. And Zhang is very proud of her.

At 46, the chief of the Administration Bureau of Wolong Nature Reserve in Southwest China's Sichuan Province has worked in the reserve's China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda for 24 years and is known as "father of pandas" among his colleagues.

Zhang, a native of Yingshan County in Sichuan, graduated from the department of biology at Sichuan University in 1983 when Fargesia spathacea Franch - a kind of bamboo that is the staple food of the giant panda - blossomed nationwide. Unlike most other plants, the bamboo withers after blossoming, bringing great threat to the giant panda.

To save the panda, Zhang volunteered to work in Wolong which only had 10 pandas in captivity. He worked with a group of Chinese, American and British zoologists at an observation station 2,520 meters above sea level. Set up by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 1980, it was the first formal station to observe pandas in the wild.

Zhang's hard work gained him a government sponsorship to study for two years before getting a master's degree in wildlife and nature reserve management at the University of Idaho, in the United States, in 1987.

"What impressed me the most was that American scientists knew most wild animals in their country very well. They had a clear picture of their population, prevalence of disease and changes in their habitats. But in China, the research of the giant panda, the country's most valuable animal, was almost blank," Zhang says.

Zhang returned to Wolong and worked in a project of the State Forestry Administration on breeding giant panda. From 1981 to 1989, foreign experts from WWF worked with their Chinese colleagues but they only succeeded in breeding one panda cub named Lan Tian (Blue Sky) in 1986. Unfortunately, it died of hemorrhagic enteritis two years later.

"There are some serious problems in breeding pandas - it was difficult for pandas to get pregnant and for their cubs to survive," Zhang says.

The best solution, as Zhang found, was love and care.

"Wild pandas like to live alone, but we made mistakes by shutting them in separate but nearby cages. Keepers worked from 9 am to 9 pm, but they did not communicate with pandas. As a result, there was no feeling between keepers and pandas and no feeling between pandas," Zhang says.

"A sexually mature male panda and its bride chosen by us would not be interested in each other. They even fought against each other."

Despite opposition from some panda experts, Zhang let pandas get together so they might fall in love. He also asked keepers to take turns taking care of pandas 24 hours a day and talk with pandas as much as possible.

"Pandas eat and even sleep while walking, and would move about 12 hours a day. It is not enough for keepers to work only eight hours a day to take care of them. Pandas, like us human beings, would be ill if they are nervous, resulting in abnormal secretion of hormones," Zhang says.

Due to the new changes, there were fewer cases of pandas falling ill and vets were no longer so tired.

Since the early 1990s, the number of pandas in captivity in Wolong has risen from 10 to 128, accounting for about 60 percent of the population of pandas in captivity in the world.

After solving the problems in breeding captive pandas, Zhang supported sending captive-bred pandas back into nature to boost the wild population.

After nearly three years of training since 2003, 4-year-old Xiang Xiang (Auspicious), which had learned to build a den, forage for food and mark his territory, became the world's first artificially bred panda living in the wild on April 28, 2006. Sadly, Xiang Xiang was found dead on a snow-covered ground on February 19, 2007.

An examination of Xiang Xiang's body showed that the panda had suffered rib fractures and internal damage, says Li Desheng, deputy director of the Wolong Center.

Experts speculated that it might have fallen from a high place after getting into a fight over food or territory with the original "residents".

Xiang Xiang had no fighting experience in the wild and was weak compared to the wild pandas, says Tang Chunxiang, a senior vet in the Wolong Center.

"We have to give captive-bred pandas better survival training, especially combat and defensive skills," Tang says.

"Its release has accumulated experience for researchers to adapt and improve the project to save the endangered giant panda," Zhang says.

Although he became chief of both the administrative bureau of the Wolong Nature Reserve, which was set up in 1963, and China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda in 2002, Zhang often helps panda cubs get rid of their droppings and covers quilts for them to prevent them from getting cold.

When pandas give birth in the early spring, it is cold in Wolong. Zhang would stand for several hours to observe them. Once a panda cub is sick, he does not leave the panda house until three days later.

His son, Zhang Siyi, a senior at Chengdu University of Technology, says that his father loves pandas more than him because his father was not with his mother when he was born in 1986. Zhang's wife, He Guangli, jokes that she had mistakenly fallen in love with Zhang, a man who did not want to return home.

Despite their complaints, they are happy because Zhang lets his wife be the decision-maker at home and she and their son are proud of his achievements.

In the 1980s, 110 university graduates, including Zhang, came to work in Wolong and 104 have left because of the dull routine in the mountainous reserve. Asked if he ever regrets spending his best years in a mountainous reserve 140 kilometers from the provincial capital Chengdu, Zhang replies "Never", for he really loves pandas. All his former classmates who live in the United States admire his achievements.

Zhang, who has been selected a delegate of the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, says that his biggest hope is to set up a national panda breeding center in Wolong within eight or 10 years.

With about 300 pandas, the center will ensure genetic diversity for pandas for 100 years, he says.

(China Daily 10/22/2007 page10)