Pandas also rebound from disaster

Beijing resident Wan Yongqing was pleasantly surprised to see a restored panda base on 150-hectares in the Wolong National Nature Reserve in Sichuan province in late April - at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda.

As a volunteer, he had visited the center and seen the devastation after the magnitude-8 Wenchuan earthquake on May 12, 2008.

"It was such a mess that I did not believe it could be rebuilt," he said. "But now it's home to the largest number of captive pandas in the world, and it releases them into the wild to enlarge the wild panda population," he said.