Zoo and Conservation Science Internships: Our Great Chengdu Adventure!

Name: Kelly Jackson

Class/Year: Class of 2017, Junior

Hometown: Waterford, Wisconsin

Location: Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China

Internship: Animal Behavior Research

Nî hâo! For those of you who don’t know that means “hello” in Chinese Mandarin. It’s been a crazy first week here in Chengdu, China! After a LONG trip here (roughly twenty hours in flying), we are finally settled into our home for the next two months. We are currently living just outside of Southwest Jiaotong University, in a hotel like complex. Macie and I share a room, where we have hot water, air conditioning, and (thankfully) a western toilet.

Since we have been here, a lot of the students have been very nice with showing us around and helping us with the language. Learning Chinese is much more difficult than any other language, because there are four different tones you have to use. If you say a word using the wrong tone, it could mean a completely different word. So far we have learned a lot of phrases, such as how to order food and basic conversational words. We have also started to cover numbers, which will be very helpful for us when we buy things. Macie and I also got Chinese names. Macie’s Chinese name is very similar to her name. It is spoken as “may shi” which means something along the lines of “beautiful flower.” My Chinese name is the word for “butterfly,” which is ‘hú dié.’ We also asked the Chinese students to write out our names, which I’ll try to post later! (this website is actually blocked in China which makes posting pictures a tad bit difficult)

Not only are the toilets and the language different, but the food is too. In Chengdu, they like things that are VERY spicy! From noodles to meat, they like things that have a kick to it. Next to where we live is a little restaurant Macie and I have been to a couple times. There they have a chicken we really like that is a bit more on the spicy side, but very delicious! We also live about a ten to fifteen minute walk from a mall, which has a Walmart, Starbucks, and KFC in it. Next to the mall is also a very delicious place we have eaten at a few times. There we get steamed and fried dumplings, which have lettuce and pork in them, and are smothered in spicy sauce. We’ve also had a wide variety of drinks, from soy milk to tea. Hot but still very good!

In addition to the students, our research advisor, James, has also been a huge help at getting us accustomed to the lifestyle here. He has shown us a few places around the city, in addition to the panda base. It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been too. The whole base itself is giant, at least three times the size of Otterbein’s campus, if not bigger. The people that we have been introduced to here are very friendly, and speak English well! And obviously, the pandas are absolutely adorable. During our time here, Macie and I will be studying the one year old panda cubs, specifically looking at their behavior. The past few days we have been working with James on developing our ethogram and the layout of the study. We will be conducting an instantaneous scan sampling, which means we will be looking at all nine of the panda cubs within their enclosure and recording their behavior at certain time intervals. As of now, we are going to be watching the pandas both outside and inside, depending on how hot it is. It is very difficult to tell the panda cubs apart, so hopefully next week we will be able to better tell who is who. :)

Aside from food and some culture aspects, China is basically like America. People have dogs and cats, and love to go shopping. They play sports like tennis and basketball (they adore Lebron James for all you Cleveland fans). And they especially love pandas, which I mean who doesn’t? For now Macie and I will continue to appreciate our fame here, getting pictures taken of us everywhere we go, and enjoy our time here in the wonderful city of Chengdu! :)