CRI听力:Singapore's Luxurious Residence for Pandas

The world's most luxurious residence for pandas is located in Singapore's River Safari Wildlife Park. The state-of-the-art enclosure will be home to 5-year old Kai Kai and his 4-year old partner Jia Jia in the next ten years.

They were loaned to the Southeast Asian city-state to mark two decades of strong ties between Beijing and Singapore. The breeding program also represents the collaboration between the China Wildlife Conservation Association and Wildlife Reserve Singapore to raise public awareness of wildlife conservation.

The zookeepers have gone to a lot of trouble to make sure the pandas adapt to the new environment. Assistant Director of Zoology at River Safari Ang Cheng Chye tends to their diet.

"Initial concern was would they be feeding on our local bamboo, so what we did was brought in three days worth of bamboo from China and then while they were feeding on that we introduced our local bamboo."

Now Kai Kai and Jia Jia are eating at least two of the four species of the local bamboo planted in the enclosure. Sulphur bamboo is their new favorite because it is thicker and easier to hold.

The Giant Panda Forest is actually a bio-dome, the largest of its kind in Southeast Asia, built at a cost of 7 million US dollars. According to Cham Tud Yinn, director of Exhibit Design and Development at River Safari, the challenge of such a building is how to simulate the giant panda's natural habitat in the rugged highlands in China's Sichuan Province.

"We are trying to create an environment that is 18 to 20 degrees Celsius, in a tropical island so we basically have to air condition this place. But we also want natural sunlight to come in for the plants. So it's a fine balance between allowing too much sunlight entering and cooling this place down. So we did a lot of computer simulation to find out if this is bright enough and in the end we chose a glass roof with kind of a printed motif on it to reduce the light entering as well. So we don't have to spend too much energy cooling this space."

The design team has converted the indoor space into a forest with live plants and rock formations. There are also water features like waterfalls and dipping pools where pandas can drink. Cham hopes his design will help the pandas thrive.

"It boils down to the naturalness of this exhibit. If you look at other panda exhibits around the world, they tend to be a bit stuck. Here right from day one, we wanted to ensure it will be as green, as 'foresty' as possible. So we put in a lot of effort to plant real bamboo and protect them from the pandas. If you look closely, some of the bamboo here is artificial; they are actually metal poles protecting the real bamboo against the pandas."

After years of preparations the enclosure is due to open on November 29 and there is already a waiting public eager to meet the pandas.

For CRI, I'm Laiming.