Looking back with Pambassador David Algranti
All Pambassadors have had an amazing time in Chengdu.
Today we will be looking back with Pambassador David Algranti:
It’s very weird for me to look back upon this crazy adventure I had the chance to live last year. It was just a few months ago, but it already feels like it was in another lifetime. And actually so many things happened during these two months that it seems like a whole other life.
A VERY FAST START
It all started so fast, I didn’t have time to realize what was happening to me. On a Friday, a colleague told me about the contest, and the deadline was on Sunday, so I quickly wrote to my friends on Facebook asking them for pictures of them holding signs with “choose David” or “vote for David” written on it, I wrote a quick song, made a video with my chinchilla on my shoulder and I managed to send the badly edited video just before the deadline. On the next day, I saw that I was among the 60 selected, so it all became very real and I had to harass my friends to vote for me until the next Saturday. It was a very hard week because I hated harassing people, and everyone had seen my video and I’m not used to be that exposed, but everyone was so supportive. Also, I was having cold feet about actually winning! But on Sunday evening, I knew I had, which meant I had to leave ten days later for the other side of the world, without knowing if it was for one week or two months! These ten days went in a flash, I had to take care of lot of things and I didn’t feel like I was ready. On top of that, my plane for Amsterdam, that was supposed to leave in the afternoon, got cancelled, and I had to take an earlier one, which meant I didn’t have time to think at all, or to say proper goodbyes, or to check my stuff one last time. I rushed in a cab and arrived running at the airport with my huge and heavy backpack (I had to plan stuff for two months!). Just in time, I didn’t miss my plane. Jeroen had the same problems in Belgium and had to leave his bags at the airport. I met him in the plane from Amsterdam to Chengdu, along with Annelijn from Holland and Ylenia from Italy. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep at all during the ten hour trip. And… there I was in Chengdu, China, and it seemed like the day before I didn’t even know about the contest.THE FIRST WEEK
The first week was a whirlwind of emotions, work, new friendships and panda galore! I won’t get into the details here, as we all did in our blogs at the time. The media were following us all the time and at times it felt like they were stealing our emotions, with a reoccurring “how do you feel?” as soon as we would actually feel something, like when we saw the cubs for the first time, when we fed pandas for the first time, when we were just trying to realize where we were and what was happening. But this whole project was mostly a PR project, intended at promoting the Panda Base, which is a good thing, so we all played along willingly.
My favorite moment of the week was when Jeroen and I were interviewed live for CCTV. Live meant that there was actually a lot of waiting, and that waiting was the best part: finally, after four days of madness, I had the time to actually stay, alone, in front of a cage. It felt like it was just me and the big giant panda in there. I squatted, and looked deep into his eyes for several minutes. This was what I had been waiting for.
A week after our arrival, was the final competition. We had been preparing for it without knowing what to expect, we all learnt our notes, and memorized 8 different bamboo species with their Chinese names, and we also all had to prepare a … performance, as a “gift” to the city of Chengdu. Someone lent me an old guitar and I tried to learn a Chinese song and find its chords. Until the end, there was no competition between the 12 pambassadors, everyone was helping everyone, and I can still remember the night before the competition, when everyone would give each other tips to memorize the bamboos. The competition itself was pretty upsetting, it was actually a TV game show that lasted four hours. The bamboos were hard to recognize the way they were placed (and we had to rush), and our performances were… well, let’s say it’s hard to watch them now! I had never sung in public and there I was, in front of a big audience, on TV, probably to be watched by millions of Chinese. I remember Ylenia and Chriszelda’s performances were particularly good. Unfortunately, the things we were most anxious about (the performance and also a little speech) didn’t count for so many points. The first quiz questions were the most important, so it mostly came down to luck. Well, not unfortunately for me since I won, I even finished second, though I really don’t know how. We were all numb and dazzled, we didn’t understand how it had gone. But that was it, I had won, along with Ali from Sweden, Ashley from the USA, Yumiko from Japan, Cici from China and JellyFish from Taiwan. I was very happy, and very sad for the others. Our new “team” felt a bit weird, because the first week was so hectic that we didn’t have enough time to become close to each other. I had almost never spoken with Ashley yet, for example, but after that competition, we were given a bit more freedom, and we all started hanging around together all the time, and we all became very very dear friends.WU YI AND YA ZAI
Now we were fully in the adventure. After a few days of break and interviews (including a very popular, very embarassing TV talk show), our official job started. We were all assigned a specific panda, and I was lucky to get Wu Yi. I already knew a lot about him, as he was a star! He was the smallest baby panda to survive, weighing only 51 grams when he was born (Wu Yi means 51 in Chinese). When he was born, the keepers didn’t even know if it was actually a panda! But they dedicated all their love and knowledge and expertise to help him survive, and now when you see him, you would never guess he had such a difficult beginning. He is a bit strong panda, weighing more than 100 kilos now. He’s also a very special panda. I would always call him “the mighty Wu Yi”, because, dare I say it… He is kind of a mean panda! But that’s also what makes him very cute and funny. He lives with Ya Zai, a female of the same age, and he always gives her a very hard time, he steals all the food, sits on the bamboo to keep it all to himself, and he even fights with her even if she obviously doesn’t want to. So she usually climbs on the highest tree to rest there, and she feeds when he’s finished (of course, we put enough food anyway so she always has more than enough to eat left). The most striking thing, to me, was how you could actually read their different personalities on their faces, they have completely different expressions, Ya Zai has tender eyes, a very soft look, and also soft manners, she is a real lady while Wu Yi has his eyes half shut as if to say “don’t mess with me”, and as regards his manners… well… he’s a pig! I think maybe he was spoiled because he was so weak, and/or he knows he learnt he had to eat a lot to survive, so he just swallows everything he can eat. If you give him a piece of apple, he will do his little dance to get it and he will swallow it at once and beg for another one, while Ya Zai will try to keep more dignity, pretending not to want the apple if we taunt her with it, and then she will savour her apple like a treasure, and then carefully lick the juice and crumbs in her paws and in her fur… Wu Yi doesn’t care if he’s dirty!
But sometimes they would just be sleeping together, tenderly entwined, which would steal my heart every time. Anyway, as they’re becoming adults they will soon be separated because pandas live alone. I think Ya Zai will like that, and I think Wu Yi might not even notice the difference.CLOSE CONTACT
The most unforgettable moments with the pandas were when we were the closest to them, when we played we the one-year-old cubs, these ones are very funny, they play war with each other and with us and they jump at our legs very clumsily, then they roll over on the ground looking so cute. You have to be a little careful though, because they already have big teeth and claws so even if they’re just playing, they can harm you. Yumiko was fearless, she was so happy to be with the cubs that she could have let them eat her, and she would still keep laughing. Then the next day she would proudly show her bruises… ah I miss Yumiko so much. We had this opportunity a few times while Ashley could do it every day since her assigned panda was Qi Qi, one of the cubs. Of course I was a bit jealous at first, but I was really happy for Ashley who was ecstatic every day, and also it turned out that working with older pandas had its advantages: we trained them! This was the thing we loved doing the most with Ali (Ali was working with Jing Jing, who was in an enclosure right next to Wu Yi and Ya Zai’s one, so I was working with Ali every day, which was really cool). Training was the thing which offered the most interaction with the pandas. The purpose of training is to teach them to give their arm for blood shots, and to roll on their back for ultra sound exams, thus avoiding anesthesia. It’s a step-by-step training, so we mostly taught them to touch a stick with their nose, to stand up, to sit down and to lie down. A bit like with dogs, except that dogs will do it both for food and to please you, whereas pandas won’t do it just for you, they are motivated by food, so we constantly give them small pieces of apple when they do good (and when they do wrong we just step back and hide the apples behind our backs). We trained Wu Yi and Ya Zai a bit, but most of all we trained a two-year-old panda called Ni Ni, she was the sweetest thing, she was so clever and patient and good willing. Aww I can still see her sitting on her bottom and holding the bars, looking at us, waiting for our instructions.
Then the most magical moment of this whole adventure, one that will stay carved in my mind forever, was when I could hold a baby panda, he was only two-month-old at the time, we had masks and gloves and everything but I could feel his fur and his warmth, half asleep, half kicking and wiggling. He even grabbed my pinkie like babies do, he was looking at me while I was softly humming to him. I think I can honestly say that It was the most beautiful 20 minutes of my life.DISCOVERING CHINA
Our very busy days didn’t leave us much time to discover the city, but we did what we could and tried everything we could, in terms of food, places, bars, and even discos. We went out of Chengdu a little and most of all we went to Longxi Hongkou Nature Reserve witht the WWF, a place where wild pandas roam. We knew we wouldn’t see any, but we found tracks (of pandas and many other animals) and learnt a bit of how the rangers work there, with their tracking and recording techniques. We slept in an empty house with no heating, but we had toilets and it felt like very luxury camping. Also, we had a team of cooks in a big tent and every evening felt like a party. So, no, we didn’t see any panda, but we walked in their tracks and maybe they did see us… After these four days in the jungle, and the cold, and the rain, we were happy to go back to our hotel and went to celebrate in our favourite bar in Chengdu: the Jelly Fish (no link with our beloved Pambassador JellyFish). I had many preconceived ideas about China, and they all fell to pieces during this whole trip, there was no cultural shock at all, we would interact with people in the most natural way possible, it didn’t feel like another world, It felt like home, I loved the food, I loved the people, I loved the places. I had read a little book about Chinese manners, because I didn’t want to make any faux-pas. But as soon as I arrived in Chengdu I understood I could throw it away. China is obviously evolving so fast and people are much more aware than we could think. You really have to go there to understand and feel that. Everyone is always talking about China taking over the world and everyone seems scared about it. It was a bit scary to me too before the trip, now it’s not anymore.BACK
Our work was to end on a Friday, and on the Tuesday before that I received the terrible news that my dad had passed away. I knew he was not well, but my mom and brother had hidden how bad he actually was while I was away. They also told me I should stay until the end, the ceremony could wait. I had planned to stay one more month of vacation, to visit Sichuan more, go to Beijing and attend Cici’s wedding in Canton. I cancelled all that, of course, but I did stay until the end of the “official” Pambassador thing and left on Saturday, the morning after the final ceremony. The last days were tainted by much sadness, but this whole trip was so important to me that I had to hang on until the end, I really wanted to. My mom told me that in his last days, my dad was seeing pandas, knowing I was with pandas made him happy and made him dream of nice things, and my mom had something else to think about all day than my father being at the hospital. Sadness was upon all of us, Pambassadors and everyone from the organization, because we knew we would have to part, we knew we wouldn’t see each other before a long time, and we knew we would miss our pandas so much… When I took the plane to Beijing (where I would connect with Paris), the stewardess was giving away the local Chengdu paper, and on the cover there was a beautiful picture of Cici, Jelly, Ashley and Yumiko with tears in their eyes, watching their pandas for the last time.
Back in Paris, I came back to reality very quickly. It did change my life though, it cured me of many of my inhibitions, I got to know wonderful people that will stay in my life forever, and sometimes when I can’t fall asleep, I think back to when I was holding the baby panda and my worries disappear.
