THE MOUNTAINS RISE IN FRONT of us, steep and stony, their shadowy ridges covered in snow-dusted shrubs and trees brave enough to cling to the vertiginous slopes. Suddenly, a glint breaks the stillness and there it is, perched halfway up a cliff, the bizarre creature we’ve travelled nearly 5,000 km to see. A golden takin. With its moose-like head hanging low off a hulking, bison-like body, it looks prehistoric, and it’s easy to see why this mammal is thought to have inspired the Golden Fleece of Greek mythology. 

Golden takins are a threatened species; by some counts they number just 5,500 worldwide. But if there were any chance of seeing one, it would be here, in China’s Tangjiahe National Nature Reserve. The 40,000-hectare area in Sichuan province is known for having one of the world’s highest and most biodiverse concentrations of wildlife, including about 85 species of protected animals. It’s also a rare natural habitat for wild giant pandas. 

While Unesco-listed Jiuzhaigou is Sichuan’s best-known nature reserve, Tangjiahe is less inhabited, and its mist-wreathed mountains and wealth of near-mythical creatures give it an otherworldly air – a quality amplified by the hundreds of crumbling tombs that dot the slopes, relics from when the area was inhabited by local tribes, who were relocated when the government declared the zone protected in 1978.

Cold, remote, deserted

Surprisingly in a country with 1.4 billion people, the reserve is deserted when we visit late in February. This is partly because it’s a four-hour journey by car and high-speed rail from Chengdu, the nearest major city; the temperature is still sub-zero; and, as one local guide tells us, “wildlife isn’t big with Chinese people”. 

There’s just one accommodation option within the park, a cavernous state-run hotel that also houses a scientific research facility. It’s as massive as it is empty. The rooms – clustered in small villas away from the lobby – are basic, but have the distinction of being the only heated places in the entire complex. Meals are taken in the frigid restaurant and served with hot tea that chills in minutes. Yet this big freeze is the perfect backdrop for observing nature’s most subtle operations, starting from the hushed trails that wind from the back of the hotel deep into the forest. 

The next morning, we meet the only two other guests in the hotel, PhD students who are conducting a conservation project. An elusive tufted deer wanders onto the grounds, coolly munching on the landscaping. Later, hiking the trails with a park ranger, we get what feels like a private performance from countless chonky Tibetan macaques, one jewel-hued golden pheasant, a pair of sleepy leopard cats, and a shy goral, an antelope-goat-sheep-like species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List. 

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The park extends one last delight before our departure the following day. On the way down the mountains, we chance upon the students again. Their thermal imaging device has captured a hot spot on the topmost branch of a distant bare tree: a golden snub-nosed monkey, an impish creature endemic to the region with a Tiffany-blue face. Through my binoculars, it seems to be balefully staring directly at me.

A day with Sichuan’s official mascot

You can’t visit Sichuan without seeing the giant pandas, the province’s official mascot. Even if they evade you in the wild, Sichuan’s six panda conservation and research bases – five of which are open to the public – ensure everyone has access. These state-run facilities study the pandas’ ecology and population dynamics, facilitate breeding and disease control, and rewild pandas that have been in captivity. More than 700 giant pandas are currently in the care of the centres, about 40 per cent of the roughly 1,800 population in the wild, according to the Chinese government’s most recent survey from 2011 to 2014.

You can sign up (for a fee) to volunteer for a day at Wolong Shenshuping, the most remote of the bases. The two-hour drive to get there from Chengdu takes you through craggy peaks and valleys cut deep into the landscape, where tiny villages sit embedded like rivets in a Chinese painting. 

We’re not sure what to expect: a facility full of scientists and studious visitors? Pandas and their keepers playing hide and seek amid bamboo forests? No. Wolong can only be described as a gathering of panda groupies; a K-pop-like fan club of sorts with shaggy stars that draw screams from devotees dressed head-to-toe in panda gear. 

The most popular pandas – those with the cutest antics, or that have famous parents, or have been featured in the media (the human status quo also applies to pandas) – have mobs gathered around their enclosures and hordes of cameras trained on them. “People make a living from livestreaming the activities of their favourite pandas,” explains our guide. 

Pulling on baggy blue overalls, which give us special access to the panda enclosures, we get to work cleaning the outdoor areas while the pandas have breakfast indoors. Fun fact: pandas eat constantly and poop about 40 times a day, because their digestive systems don’t process bamboo well. Thankfully, because their diet consists almost exclusively of bamboo, the century-egg-like lumps smell almost fragrant, with a hint of pandan. We spend the next 20 minutes or so sweeping them into garbage cans, and separating the larger bits of undigested bamboo out by hand, so they can be recycled as panda snacks. 

The reward for this toil is about five minutes up close with the chubby giants while their keepers feed them and give them their daily health check-up. We’re told to stand a couple of metres away so our presence doesn’t bother the bears – pandas are extremely near-sighted and can’t see clearly beyond that range. Still, it’s close enough to look into their adorably doleful eyes, be enveloped in their throaty huffing…and see the razor-sharp claws that protrude from their six-fingered paws.

The rest of the day is spent hurling down and splitting bamboo canes for the pandas to eat (an excellent exercise in anger management) and learning to make “panda cakes” – a supplement to the pandas’ diet that contains soybeans, corn and carrots. 

We spend some time outside the facility before we leave, where the scenery – a combination of man-made landscaping designed to resemble limestone terraces, encircled by majestic mountains – is itself worth the journey. The sun is pushing through the moody sky, casting shadows across the terraces’ pools and the frost-covered ground. As we trudge towards our vehicle, our guide hands us souvenirs for completing the volunteer programme: panda-printed T-shirts and tote bags, and bracelets adorned with plush panda heads. Just the things to join the fan club with when we return.