Flight CA412 landed at Chengdu Tianfu International Airport in the late afternoon. The group transferred to the hotel in Shuangliu, settled in and received their study materials — record books, measurement kits and the camp handbook — before a first dinner together.

• Arrival at Tianfu International Airport
• Study materials issued
• Team briefing over dinner

The camp opened at Chengdu University of Information Technology, home to the largest and best-equipped university meteorology science base in southwest China. Students handled weather observation instruments, toured the observation station and the radar vehicle, and took the smart meteorology course on disaster prevention, climate change and vertical zonation. The afternoon moved to the Sichuan University–PolyU Institute for Disaster Management and Reconstruction, where laboratory work and emergency-response study framed disaster governance as a social question as much as an engineering one.

• Opening ceremony at CUIT
• National meteorology science base
• Weather station and radar vehicle
• SCU–PolyU Institute for Disaster Management

An early start for a full morning at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding — the world's largest ex-situ panda conservation population, landscaped to imitate wild habitat. Students observed pandas of different ages across the Adventure Valley and Infinite Hills zones, joined interpretive sessions on nutrition and husbandry, and debated the scientific value and ethical limits of ex-situ conservation. The afternoon shifted to Kuanzhai Alley, the last surviving Qing-dynasty street grid of old Chengdu, for face-changing opera, covered-bowl tea and the city's slower rhythm.

• Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding
• Ex-situ conservation discussion
• Kuanzhai Alley heritage experience

A two-and-a-half-hour drive into the Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture brought the group to Taoping Qiang Village in Li County — a living cultural ecosystem whose stone watchtowers and dwellings have withstood earthquakes for centuries through interlocking masonry, internal water channels and passive ventilation. Students read the buildings as climate technology and heard the Qiang flute, whose austere sound carries the memory of migration and highland survival. The afternoon was given to Qiang embroidery in Xuecheng: guided study of historic pieces and their motifs, an interactive quiz, then basic stitch instruction and each student's own finished work.

• Taoping Qiang Village old fortress
• Earthquake-resistant Qiang architecture
• Qiang flute performance
• Qiang embroidery course

Yanwozhai Village welcomed the group with the Qiang red ribbon ceremony, followed by a donation ceremony. In the horse husbandry course students entered traditional stables, led and fed horses, and interviewed local owners about temperament, feeding and breeding — tracing the horse's resilient shift from farm labour to partner in village eco-tourism. Teams then divided between horseback patrol up to alpine meadows at 2,600–2,800 m, practising leave-no-trace fieldwork, and a community survey on rural industry transition. Village elders sent the group off with unaccompanied polyphonic mountain songs passed down by ear alone.

• Qiang red welcome and donation ceremony
• Horse husbandry course
• Horseback patrol at 2,600–2,800 m
• Community industry survey
• Elders' polyphonic folk songs

The three-hour drive back to Chengdu doubled as working time, with teams pulling their measurement sheets, interviews and sketches into a single argument. The afternoon closing ceremony gave every team the floor to present what they had found — and to revisit the research questions they had written on their first evening in Sichuan.

• Team data synthesis en route
• Closing ceremony and presentations

A final morning in Chengdu, then the transfer to Tianfu International Airport and flight CA427 home — with field notebooks full, and a set of questions about resilience and coexistence to keep working on back in Hong Kong and Macao.

• Departure from Tianfu International Airport
• Flight CA427 home