Meet your friendly English-speaking guide at your hotel lobby and you’ll head to the Chengdu Panda Breeding Center, a non-profit research and breeding facility for giant pandas and other rare animals. On a guided tour, visit different sections of the center to get a full overview of a panda’s development, from a baby panda to the full-grown giant panda. Visit the baby garden, where you can see giant panda cubs, which weigh only about 3.5 ounces (100 grams) at birth and by the third month are able to walk on their own. Then stop at the sub-adult garden, where the adolescent pandas hang out, and see the adult garden, which houses the giant pandas in all their full-grown glory. Take pictures of this endangered species eating bamboo, sleeping or frolicking about. Finally, try to spot the sleeping red pandas stretched out on branches in the red panda garden.

After stopping for lunch at a local restaurant, you’ll go to the Sanxingdui Museum, where you’ll gain historical and cultural knowledge of this area of China. With your informative and friendly guide, peruse the many Bronze Age relics that were unearthed in the 1980s, when more than 1,000 bronze, gold and jade artifacts were discovered. These archeological discoveries changed people’s understanding of ancient history and culture, as there was little to no previous knowledge of China’s Bronze Age. Learn about the significance of each relic on a walk through the different exhibition halls.