I never got to see Meng Yuan 梦圆 and Meng Xiang 梦想, the Zoo Berlin-born twins, when they were living in Berlin – I went in January 2020 and sadly they weren’t on show yet, then of course, world travel shut down and I never made it back before they moved to China. The twins moved to China in December 2023 so are still quite new to their life in China. They are living in No1 Villa, and are next door neighbours to Yuan Meng. Originally they were both sharing the space together at the same time, now they both still use the same yard, but alternate between who is outside, e.g. on the first day I visited the sign said Meng Xiang (although I didn’t actually see him, think I was too late in the morning) and on the next day the sign was Meng Yuan – who I did get to see! This must have been a fairly recent thing because all the posts I’d seen online had had the both of them together. Anyway, I was lucky enough to see Meng Yuan (or Pit, his German nickname) – it was very convenient that he is neighbours with Yuan Meng as it meant I could watch both at the same time, and he was as equally popular as Yuan Meng – there were even some German visitors there who had come especially to see him^ He was very active when I was there. When I got there he was already out and eating bamboo, then he would get up for a walk around different parts of the yard before settling back to bamboo again. When the keeper was around and trying to get Yuan Meng inside next door, Meng Yuan was very keen to catch her attention (even though it wasn’t his turn yet), for this reason I like the yard setup with the keeper path between yards – he waited at the door patiently until it was his turn not long after. The yard the twins share is a very nice one, it’s large and on the end of the row, so goes around the corner of the building also meaning a long path for viewing. And there are lots of different elevations and terrains around it too, there’s a nice rock formation in the middle and plenty of trees – it’s easy for a panda to be sitting there not too deep in the bushes and you might not even see it!