Friday November 17
With China being one of the few places in the world you can still see the heavily-endangered panda, we headed to Beijing Zoo on our first jetlag-free day in the city.
The zoo has around half a dozen of the bears all lovingly looked after as one of the country's national symbols.
Outside vendors sold bizarre panda hats, hoping to cash in on some of the magic.
The bears roamed around there large indoor and outdoor enclosures - and one of them went to the toilet in front of us.
The vast zoo cost us just 15CNY to get in - or £1.50 in English money.
Elsewhere there were Bengal tigers, lions, Polar bears, monkeys and lions among the wide selection of animals.
But although some of the animals were well looked after, we quickly became disturbed by the size of some of the cages.
One Bengali tiger in a small enclosure repeatedly howled at us, seemingly in agony. Dozens of Chinese people called back mimicking the animals' cry jokingly.
Nearby two lions - normally such mighty beasts - were so severely emaciated they seemed to struggle to walk down a gentle slope.
Their skinny bodies appeared to be just half the width they should be.
A large black panther padded up and down in a tiny cage that could have been designed for rabbits it was so small.
The elephants were housed in cages so tiny that they had little room to walk around. This appeared to be because a much larger enclosure was being cleaned.
However, there was no evidence of cleaning going on and a fellow traveller who had visited three days beforehand said the elephants had been shut up then as well.
As we left, I didn't know whether to be delighted to have seen the pandas - or horrified by some of the conditions.
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