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\u201cIf you go down to the Sichuan woods, you\u2019re sure of a big surprise\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
No, it is not a new species, exactly; but you might chance upon a famous British TV presenter seemingly cosplaying \u2013 as a giant panda.<\/p>\n
This unsettling mise-en-sc\u00e8ne occurs during Ben Fogle\u2019s Chinese Adventure<\/em>, available on Now TV, at the Shenshuping Panda Base, a remote, government-run wildlife unit in Wolong, Sichuan province, where pandas are born and raised before being released to repopulate the mountains.<\/p>\n Trouble is, the cubs cannot be allowed a glimpse of a human face, lest they become too trusting of the world\u2019s most dangerous species. So Fogle and his three-strong film crew must dress up in full-length panda costumes for their encounter.<\/p>\n Looking like bank robbers at a fancy-dress party thrown by The Joker, they set off to engage with China\u2019s cuddliest, most venerated beast \u2013 appropriate for Fogle\u2019s quest during the three-episode miniseries to discover whether the \u201ctimeless ways of the past\u201d, as he puts it, can endure \u201cas China races towards the future\u201d.<\/p>\n Fogle\u2019s 8,000-kilometre (4,970-mile) odyssey, much of it undertaken by high-speed train, begins with him as a bricklayer \u2013 albeit a \u201cbrickie\u201d relaying some of the world\u2019s most celebrated bricks. On the Great Wall north of Beijing he helps with preservation work on another symbol of China that his new boss says is in the hearts and minds of all Chinese people. This too chimes with his mission to \u201cget to know the \u2018real\u2019 China\u201d, clich\u00e9 or not.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIf you go down to the Sichuan woods, you\u2019re sure of a big surprise\u2026\u201d No, it is not a new species, exactly; but you might…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[5848,832,506,28010,2492,318,4786],"class_list":["post-75598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bored-interesting","tag-ben","tag-china","tag-discovered","tag-fogle","tag-real","tag-series","tag-thinks","wpcat-33-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/75599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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