We decided to avoid the 37 hour train journey from Shanghai to Chengdu and flew instead. Good move we thought ,not sure we could have taken that amount of slurping and burping from the locals, not to mention the non-stop eating.

The day after we arrived we took a trip to the Giant Panda Breeding Sanctuary. This is one of the few centres in the world where you can view the Giant Panda as they are close to extinction. Apparently there are only about 1,000 left in the world.

On entering the sanctuary we were taken to the first enclosure where we saw 2 panda's sat near the enclosure gates chewing on bamboo. It was an amazing site, we were so close we could hear them stripping the bamboo and chomping it. They were huge but also seemed to be gentle creatures. They didn't seem to be bothered by people at all.

The next enclosure we saw more pandas sat down chewing bamboo.They love to eat the bamboo, apparently they consume about 40kg of bamboo per day, over 16 hours. They are supposed to be quite fussy though and will only eat certain species of bamboo this is why many of them starve in the wild.

The sanctuary concentrates on breeding the pandas to keep the species alive. It is supposed to be quite a tricky process but each year in Autumn they manage to produce a few newborns.

We were here in summer so saw the cubs. They were all together in one enclosure and when we arrived many of them were sleeping in the trees. The keepers came out to feed them but many of them were having trouble getting down from the trees. The male keeper picked them up and placed them on the top of the tree so they could slide down the tree like a fireman would down a pole. We got some great video footage of this. They were very cute and playful, they had footballs to play with and were tussling each other. They seemed like really affectionate sociable animals we could have watched them all day.

After the Giant Panda cubs we were taken to look at the red pandas. They were really cute looked like a cross between a fox and a racoon. They were a bit more jumpy,probably because they were so small and they hid in the trees alot.

This sanctuary is definately worth a visit is an amazing to see a Giant Panda so close, definately one of the highlights of our whole trip.

Whilst in Chengdu we also visited Wenshu Temple, which was quite pretty and Wang Jiangs tomb, an emperor from the period of the five dynasties. The tomb was really detailed with many muscians surrounding it as well as guarding soldiers. The gardens around the complex were really picturesque, well worth a visit.

Chengdu is a definite must in China. The pandas were amazing.

Next stop Xian, to see the famous Terracota Warriors.