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China's father of giant pandas
To the 81 giant pandas living in Wolong Natural Reserve, their largest habitat in China, there is something more pleasing than playing on bamboo trees for food and fun or taking a nap bathed in gentle sunbeams.
They are often more eager to see their "father" every day and play as the pampered children in his presence. Small, quiet and scholastic, no one would connect 44-year-old Zhang Hemin with "China's father of giant pandas" at first sight. But it is how this man, who has devoted more than 16 years of his life to China's southwest mountains and bamboo forests, is addressed by his peers both home and abroad. Conferred with a master's degree of wild animal and natural reserve management by the University of Idaho in 1989, Zhang is among the few who came back for panda research. Though awarded a special prize for giant panda protection by the United Nations Environment Program and many other prizes from the central and Sichuan Provincial government, the director of Wolong Natural Reserve Administration often remains silent when talking about himself. However, he will immediately become talkative when the topics shift to the pandas. Zhang said his great affection toward the pandas at Wolong began in the winter of 1984 when he went into the bamboo forests in Niutou Mountain near Wolong with an elderly colleague. On their second day in the mountain, the zoology major, having just graduating from Sichuan University, found a sick panda moaning on the mountain path. He asked the colleague to immediately go back to their camp more than 50 kilometers away for backup, and he himself decided tostay with the agonizing animal. The "father" said he gave all his food and water to the panda at death's door until rescuers arrived 15 hours later. Seeing that the panda was saved, Zhang, suffering from hunger and coldness could not hold himself up any longer and fell with illness. This experience tied the man with the pandas. Zhang explained it to be the reason why he has stuck for more than 20 years to this "unprofitable and desolate" field of research. "Pandas are the eternal drives to my life," said the "father", who is now the head of China Wolong Giant Panda Protection and Research Center. With unremitting hard work, the center has developed approaches to enhance the pandas' reproduction capability and put them into practice, effectively solving some historical difficulties in panda raising. They made attempts to raise the pandas in the man-made diversified environment, boosting the life qualities of the pandas and strengthening their physique. Zhang and his team employed exterior hormones to help the pandas enter oestrum and also improved the technology that finds the best time for artificial fertilization which makes female pandas successfully give birth 85 percent of the time. Besides, they also made a more nutritious menu for the cubs, increasing their survival rate to 100 percent during the past fiveyears. All the efforts have been rewarded. The number of pandas in Wolong Natural Reserve has growing from ten in the 1980s to 81, half of China's total in captivity. Zhang said they are also doing research on sending the human-raised pandas back to nature, filling China's vacancy in this field. Yet currently, there still exist huge gaps between China and the western countries in terms of wild animal protection. In order to get closer to a leading theory in panda protection,Zhang keeps learning from and communicating with foreign zoologists. But the language became a large barrier at the very beginning, he remembers. "So I wrote down, sometimes on my arms, the pronunciation of every word I could not understand during the daytime research work, and checked them in dictionary one by one at night." In 1985, China launched the second round of a national survey on wild pandas and habitats. "I remembered at that time they needed an interpreter competentboth in English and professional knowledge." "And I was the only one fitting the standards," said Zhang with a bit pride. All his colleagues and friends know that there is no weekend orvacations on the calendar of the "father of pandas." He often spends a whole week or even a month, day and night, in mountains or before the cages of the pandas. Zhang said he always feel sorry for his family. "I was even away when my wife was giving birth and I was often absent when my son was ill in hospital," he said. "Certainly I will make compensations to them and spend more time at home, but
maybe it is not the time now. I know there are another group of children
awaiting me in the mountains."
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![Pandas play with their "farther" Zhang Hemin in Wolong Natural Reserve. [Xinhua]](xin_12080229100988213622.jpg)
