Panda lovers find paradise on expressway to Ya'an

Although it is more comfortable to take a bullet train to Ya'an, Sichuan province, Qi Meng, a panda fan in Chengdu, the provincial capital, likes driving to the famous city to take panda photos.

It was through Ya'an that the Western world learned about the giant panda in 1690 after the French missionary Jean Pierre Armand David mailed a panda specimen to the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris.

The Bifengxia base of the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda in Ya'an boasts many pandas in different age groups.