We, Kirsten Nelson and Irina Rasner, served as interns at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding from July 1 to August 9, 2013. As graduate students from the Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Denver in Colorado, USA, we worked under Dr. Sarah Bexell, Director of Conservation Education at the Chengdu Panda Base. Alongside Sarah and other panda base staff, our fellow peer and colleague, Ethan Crawford, joined us. Throughout our time in China, he filmed a documentary based on our work. The focus of this internship was on conservation education in rural areas of Sichuan province, while working in collaboration with other Chinese university students. The internship’s goal was to understand the main issues threatening giant pandas and red pandas, as well as other wildlife in Sichuan.

We felt an enormous honor being two students who earned this internship that focused on educating children to conserve the Earth and all its creatures. We felt trusted by the faculty at the University of Denver to represent our university and to become more knowledgeable in the topics of biodiversity and conservation education. While we spent time in two rural parts of China, we played games aimed at teaching children the importance of ecosystems. We also aided in doing research on human behavior in both the Chengdu Zoo and the Chengdu Panda Base. Our days were filled with raw, non-filtered scents and sights, including seeing beautiful, Asiatic black bears playing at the Moon Bear Rescue Center after having been tortured for the extraction of their bile. We would never have had the opportunity to travel and learn had it not been for the Graduate School of Social Work’s desire to broaden its lens and support students and professors to bridge together theory and practice.

One of our most memorable experiences took place in Laojun Mountain, at the summer camp’s concluding student performance. A group of elderly women, the grandmothers of some of the children, held our hands and said, “You are the first foreigners we have ever met”. This was not stated in a tongue native to us, and yet their words spoke more dearly than if they had been stated in English. The grandmothers invited us to hike with them to the tallest standing Buddha in the world the next morning. Greeting us with freshly boiled potatoes at 7:00am (after we had already eaten at least one bowl of noodles for breakfast), these unbelievable women hiked without a break to this extremely sacred place while unveiling a whole new world to us.

Prior to spending two months in Chengdu, we knew that expecting a Western toilet would be unrealistic, expecting a bowl of noodles to be spicy was a guarantee, and looking extremely different than the majority of people around us would be normal. Having these things told to us, however, was significantly different from living them. The sights, smells and tastes of food never lost its uniqueness, every bowl of noodles was amazing, and every Coca-Cola drink was that much colder than the summer humidity. Our Chinese friends gave us the endearing Mandarin names of “Ma-Ma” and “Hu-Hu”, and these words made us laugh because we could never pronounce them correctly.

After returning home to Denver, Colorado, we felt more aware of how people live, what we are taught to be important as Americans, versus what really is important. We hope that the two months we spent in China will continue inspiring each of us to practice mindful living, as well as enable us to share the stories we lived and heard. We would like to continue being advocates for the issues we learned about in China，as well as our own local conservation obstacles, this will influence our social work practice for the rest of our lives. Our experiences could never be replicated, and we are forever thankful to Sarah, Ethan “Yi-fen”, and the conservation education team at the Chengdu Panda Base. Our memories would be empty without the fantastic group of Chinese-university students, including Wang Lyudiao “Alex”, Lin ‘Amy”, Meng Xiangtao “Jeremy”, Ma Ii “Mary”, Yuqi, and Hairi “Harry”. You are all with us regardless of how much land and water separates our countries. Thank you for your warmth, hospitality, translation skills, hot-pot meals, laughter, games, and overall happiness you brought to our lives.

DuFu

The war among human beings hasn’t ceased! Where have the phoenix and the qilin fled?

Wicked, we indulge ourselves in disastrous fishing, Obvious of ancient sages’ lament for wildlife killing.

This poem was written in 762 during the Tang Dynasty (618-907), when the poet Du Fu (712-770) traveled from Chengdu to Mianyang to visit a friend, where he witnessed fishing occurring on a grand-scale. At that time the flames of war were burning in the north of China in the bloody An-Shi Rebellion (755-762). Though Mianyang, located in western Sichuan, was far from the battlefield a war of a different kind was underway –wildlife killing. The poet sympathizes with these creatures so much so that he equates them to the divine animals the phoenix and qilin. In this poem Du Fu expresses the feeling that over-hunting is no less than sinning. He reminds us all of the ancient sages，admonishment against killing. He uses “we” instead of “you”, which cuts to the heart of the matter； it is the general public, not a particular person, that takes pleasure in hunting and killing.

The Munijac

DuFu

Faremll, farewell my dear dear rivulet!

I’m honored to join the dainties for their fete.

Yet not important enough to go with some immortal.

Over the butcher and cook I dare not grumble.

In these troubled times all living things are despised,

And by my little fame of flavor I am doomed.

The nobles and nobilities are robbers and thieves, Who in a wink gulp down our precious lives!

This poem, also written by Du Fu, is from the perspective of the muntjac, a small deer that was hunted for its tender meat and the quality of its hide for leather working.

Here the victimized muntjac narrates the heart-breaking story of his approaching death. He sounds meek and humble, but there is indignation and a denunciation beyond his words. We can interpret the poem to read: “I have been hunted in the deep mountains and had no choice but to bid farewell to the clear rivulet by which I have been living. It is such an honor that nobles have set their eyes on me and desire that I become one of the dishes on their extravagant table. I am not as lucky as the muntjac in the myth who was favored by an immortal and ascended to heaven with him. Is there any alternative to being eaten by those gluttons? My intention is not to resent the butcher and cook, for it was my destiny to be born in these troubled times when all living things are taken lightly by the human world. My meat is considered to be of good flavor, which has won me a little fame of a sort, and my doom as well.”

However, in the last two lines, the poet denounces those people of power and status by declaring them robbers and thieves of life. This work, through the hopeless account of the muntjac and the plain attack on those so-called genteel people, conveys a heart-felt compassion toward wildlife.

Abstaxningjrom Killing  

SuShi

Fresh meat is cooked for every dinner,

Yet our muscles andflcsh don’ t grow, as ever. Today blood all over the ground splashes； Tomorrow none in our stomachs remains.

Though their lives are cheap and humble,

They feel pain without bitter tears visible.

What’s the sense of killing me the poorest?

What a shame man makes himself beast!

How should we approach wildlife protection? It is advisable to start by looking at what we eat. As the famous poet Su Shi (1037-1101) who lived during the Song Dynasty (960-1279) says in this poem, meat at every meal does not make us stronger, the delicacies made from animals do not remain in our stomachs for long, making the greater crime the fact that the pain and terror of these living beings falls on our blind eyes and deaf ears. Let’s take the position of die creature in torment: How would we feel if we were slain and dismembered, and then steamed, or fried in boiling oil?

The poet Su Shi is clearly concerned about the rampant consumption of animals and wildlife. As was the German social anthropologist Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) who once said that only when our compassion is not just for human beings but is also extended to all living things under heaven, can the glory of human nature shine brilliantly. Su Shi and other ancient sages are just those who possess such brilliant human nature.