The third and final panda to share about in the No1 Giant Panda House is of course Mei Lan 梅兰, also known as Rou Rou! She is a particularly famous panda because of her adorable round face and has a huge fandom on social media (you can find so many videos online). She is now 8 years old and was born to mum Mei Bang 梅浜, who was born overseas in Wakayama Adventure World, Japan. Alongside her round face, she also has quite distinctive golden fur. She is also well-known for her fondness of pumpkins, which I just think is so sweet, I was a little sad there was no pumpkin for her to eat when I was there! She is described as being active and lively, and enjoys interacting with her keepers. On my first visit, I only saw her sleeping on the platform, so this was a good reason to come back for my second visit to try and see her awake.

She was born at the Chengdu Panda Base in 2016, which means I likely saw her in the nursery when I went in 2016 and then in the kindergarten in 2017 (she may be in the final picture in this post) and 2018 before she moved to Panda Valley in December 2018. I completely didn’t realise this before now, things are really coming full circle now that I’ve been travelling to China over several years.