For the love of the pandas

Mei Yan has been working at the Chengdu Research Base which breeds Giant Pandas for the past eight years. As of now, she helps feed 50 pandas. Caring for pandas is hard work. Every day, she has to prepare bamboo for the pandas to eat and then clear away hundred kilos of fecal matter. An adult giant panda eats around 100 kilos of bamboo shoots. To show you how hard she has to work, Mei raises her arms and says: "Look at my muscles, better than that of many men." If she's on the night shift, she feeds milk to the baby pandas at 5 am. It is a highly demanding job to feed the cubs, she says. Born in 1986, Mei is a typical Chengdu girl, optimistic, cheerful with a smile similar to that of a cute panda. Young pandas may look cute, but have sharp claws and teeth. Often Mei is bitten and scratched by the pandas. But despite the problems, Mei still feels a great sense of accomplishment, watching the cubs grow. "They are like my family," she says.

Photos by Lyu Jia for China Daily

(China Daily 06/11/2016 page6)