After your guide picks you up from your hotel lobby in Chengdu city centre, you will start this full day tour in the capital of Sichuan province and home of the pandas. The first stop of the tour is the Chengdu Panda Breeding Center. This conservation facility is leading the charge for giant panda breeding in Sichuan, with the ultimate aim of releasing these animals back into the wild once numbers have stabilized. There are separate enclosures for adult and adolescent pandas, where you can watch these Chinese icons chow down on bamboo and amble around their spacious, semi-wild areas. At many times of year, it's also possible to see the panda cubs the facility breeds. They begin their life as minuscule, hairless creatures, weighing just 3.5 ounces (100 grams), and grow rapidly into adorable balls of fur.

After the Centre, your tour guide will take you to eat a traditional Chengdu-Sichuan lunch at a local restaurant.Next you will visit the Wenshu Monastery, also known as Manjushri Monastery, the best-preserved Buddhist temple in Chengdu. This temple houses interesting artwork and relics, including a skull of Xuan Zhang, a renown monk of the Tang Dynasty.