See panda cubs in China at Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding

The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding is obsessed with pandas. Its entrance gate is designed to resemble a panda. Its grounds are adorned with panda-statues and panda-shaped flowerbeds. In souvenir shops, you can buy serious books about panda breeding, and keyrings and stuffed toys, some as large as the real thing.

Obsession is a necessity, though, when working with giant pandas, since one of the world's most endangered creatures is notoriously shy and solitary, with an inexplicable disinterest in sex, let alone reproduction.

These chaste creatures are mollycoddled and monitored and provided with every opportunity for romance. As a 15-minute video on pandas' mating habits in the museum explains, however, getting pandas to bonk isn't easy.

The Panda Base in the northern suburbs of Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, has valiantly persevered – and with considerable success. It opened in 1987 with six pandas and has since seen the birth of 172 cubs. It has produced many of the pandas on loan to zoos around the world, although not the only two in Australia at Adelaide Zoo – a particularly sex-shy couple that have, in 10 years, failed to conceive.

Chengdu's Panda Base holds 100 pandas at any one time, although not all are presented to the public, since this is primarily a scientific research and breeding centre. Still, it's the only place in the world where you'll see dozens of pandas in one place – providing you can elbow aside the admiring crowds, especially at weekends.

The animals live in open enclosures surrounded by ditches. Rocks and vegetation provide a good semblance of a natural environment, sometimes making the pandas difficult to spot. Early morning feeding time, before 10, is best since the pandas are at their most active. At other times, you're more likely to only see black-and-white bundles of sleeping fur, sometimes lodged in the forks of trees. When Chengdu's summer humidity hits, the pampered animals often retreat to their air-conditioned quarters.

You're more likely to see cubs in the second half of the year. In late summer, you can admire the cubs from behind protective glass in their nursery. By autumn (September or October) they should be playing outside; they tumble about, clamber onto wooden platforms and play with toys as hundreds of cameras click.

The giant pandas get all the attention but the centre also works with red pandas (some of which are on show), golden monkeys, South China tigers, black-necked cranes and other rare species.