The Panda Servant

Lin Weizhou calls herself "the panda servant." Since retiring from her hectic days as a local reporter a decade ago, she has served her beloved pandas.

Though her former life, filled with busy schedules and tight deadlines, never would have allowed her the leisurely hours that the 66-year-old has spent with her bear-family, it gave her the instinctive know-how to produce some 600 hours of documentary detailing the lives of pandas inside the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding.

Lin is one of the earliest volunteers at the base, after the 2 million-square-meter reserve opened in 1987. Never expecting to fall in love with the pandas, Lin ended up staying at the base for nearly two years on her first trip there - one that was only meant to be a short stay to gather material to write a children's book about pandas.

But in 2003, when SARS hit, she gave up the chance to return home to Shanghai - opting instead to stay with the pandas.

"The director of the research base said that if I left I wouldn't be allowed back because of the major outbreak of SARS nationwide," Lin told the Global Times. "He said that I would be threatening the health of the pandas if I picked up the virus on my way back to the base."

Lin, torn at the thought of not being able to return to her pandas, stayed behind, asking her sister back at home instead to send more clothes for the seasons ahead.

Since those days, Lin has never been able to separate herself from the pandas for long. She travels extensively to Chengdu yearly, staying months at a time on her visits there.

Always by her side

Donning fabrics and a handbag with panda paintings on them - which she created on her own, in addition to the cute cub drawings on her cellphone and umbrella - images of the bears she's cared for - she said that the pictures make her feel comfortable and as if surrounded by them at all times.

"People sometimes refer to me as 'Grandma Panda,' but I don't think human beings deserve the honor of that title," she said. "We've got so much to learn from pandas."

Deeply impressed by the first cry of a panda cub when she was given the chance to see a mother panda giving birth, Lin's unconditional love for the bears was born.

"It was the most amazing and touching moment that I had ever been a part of," she said.

Close as kin

Over the years at the base, Lin became strongly attached to four panda cubs in particular. She and the panda keepers at the base named them: Yuanyuan, Mendou, Huazui, and Maomao.

"Each cub has their own characters. Yuanyuan is soft and sweet, and likes to turn to people for comfort; Mendou is a care-free and cheerful lad; Huazui is noisy and naughty; and Maomao is a little sensitive," she said.

Lin said she grew to know them and their personalities well over time, as she was always up early, when she would spend the entire day with them, trying to capture their every moment growing up.

"I never wanted to miss a second of their development," she said, of the bears that are now 9 years of age.

It was around the time when Lin saw pandas climbing iron railings that she came up with the idea of building wooden bars and poles for the pandas to climb - also the first time the base started constructing panda homes this way. She also made two swings for the pandas to play with, a popular choice of leisure among her bears.

Emotional 'beings'

Through her time with the bears, Lin has also discovered that pandas' emotions are similar to humans. In fact, Yuanyuan became so jealous over Lin's special love for Maomao that Yuanyuan even refused tasty bamboo, the giant panda's favorite snack.

"I loved Maomao a lot because she's very sensitive. She liked to sit beside me, and hold my hand. She would sometimes bite, but whenever I felt pain and said 'en', she would stop," Lin said.

"But Yuanyuan knew that I loved Maomao the most and became angry," she said.

One day when Lin gave Maomao a bamboo shoot, Yuanyuan rushed in to take it away - before throwing the food away with great force instead of eating it. The same thing happened twice afterwards.

"I was surprised when I saw her doing this," she said. "But then I realized that I needed to be fair to all the cubs."

Nobody's keeper

Lin said that it's hard to bring herself to go to the zoo.

"It's like a prison for animals," she said. "Animals do not depend on humans to live; people build zoos for their own interests."

"Some people argue that there are fewer pandas because pandas are having problems with reproducing," she said. "But they've missed the most pertinent problem: there's less and less space for them to live in the wild due to human activity."

Lin said that a female panda can get pregnant four to five times in her life and give birth to one to two cubs each time.

It is the dire situation of the giant panda that has led Lin to her next task: the creation of a panda museum for children.

"I want to show my documentaries to children, to let children tell their parents and other adults that pandas are suffering and sacrificing for the development of human kind," she said. "People need to know that humans are not a higher form of life than animals."