The Seal Beach International Friendship Association (SBIFA) is welcoming Chinese New Year a few weeks early this year with another delightful presentation on Thursday, Jan. 21, by local filmmaker and world-wide traveler, Jackie Baird-Bunker in one of her latest films, “PANDAmonium on the Wild Side of China.”
Jackie says China has always held a mystique for travelers as far back as the tales of Marco Polo’s journeys along the ancient trade route that introduced silk, tea and spices to wealthy Europeans. Jackie prefers to follow the path less traveled, this time spending several weeks exploring China’s “Wilder Side” along the Tibetan Plateau where endangered species as Giant Pandas, Golden Takin and Golden Monkeys, still survive in the dwindling bamboo forests and mountains of the plateau.
Her Panda adventure begins with several Captive Breeding and Disease Research Centers outside of Chengdu where she spent hours documenting the playful antics of juvenile pandas, including the little known red panda that actually belongs to the raccoon family.
Several days were spent hiking with fellow photographers in a Wild Panda Nature Reserve looking for wild pandas; some of which have been successfully reintroduced to life in the wild after completing special survival training conducted at one of the Chengdu Panda Centers she visited.
This program along with the successful reintroduction of Mongolian horses documented in her film on Mongolia are serving as models for saving other species bordering on extinction.
The film concludes with visits to Tibetan Monasteries and villages and a visit to remote Jiuzhaigou National Park high in the mountains of the Tibetan Plateau. Jiuzhaigou is only beginning to attract local and foreign visitors and offers the adventuresome traveler a chance to hike along the park’s chain of beautiful crystal clear tourmaline colored lakes and waterfalls set against a backdrop of snow-covered rugged mountain peaks – another of Nature’s spectacular treasures.
The public is invited.
The dinner meeting starts at 6:30 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 21, at the Senior Center of the Mary Wilson Library, 707 Electric Ave., Seal Beach.
Cost: Members: $12; $22 couples; Non-members: $15; $27 couples; Students up to age 21: $10; Program only: $6 (come at 7:15 p.m.).
Membership $15. Pay by check at the door.
If you must cancel please let us know so others may come if they are on a waiting list. Reservations will be taken on a first-come, first-serve basis.
RSVP by Saturday, Jan. 16, with Claire Yeh 562-431-5414 or email her at kalea16@gmail with names of all attendees.
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