The Keeper Who Became A Baby Panda's Dad

There's a tiny panda in China who has no idea she's famous. She sits in the same spot she always sits. She peels bamboo with the same unhurried pace she always peels. When another panda wanders over and swipes the shoot right out of her hands, which happens pretty much every single day, she just blinks, reaches for another one, and starts peeling again. No tantrum, no drama, not even a sigh. Just another bamboo shoot. While millions of people around the world lose sleep watching her videos, while tourists queue for three hours before dawn just to glimpse her round little silhouette, while she's been appointed the official honorary director of a city's tourism bureau, she's just sitting there, being a panda. Completely unbothered, completely herself. Her name is Hua Hua, and this is her story. But honestly, it's also his story. Because behind every video of this tiny, fluffy, triangular panda waddling through the morning mist, there's a man in a green uniform who's been showing up for her every single day for years. A man whose rough Sichuan voice calling out, has become to her the sound of safety. The sound of someone who always, always comes back. This is the story of a panda who was never supposed to be famous, and the keeper who made sure she had every reason to keep going. And by the end of it, I promise you, you won't be thinking about pandas. You'll be thinking about someone in your own life who quietly did that for you too. Let's start at the beginning. July 4th, 2020. Inside the moon delivery room at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, a panda named Chenggang gives birth to twins. Chenggang is 20 years old. For a giant panda, that's not just old, that's ancient. That's the panda equivalent of your grandmother attempting a marathon. She's been a mother eight times before, and she is tired in a way that goes all the way to her bones. She does her best. She really does. But after nine months, her milk begins to run out, her body can't keep up, and the decision is made to place the smaller of the twins, a delicate little thing who barely registers on the scale, into the care of a surrogate mother named Yuan Lun. That tiny panda is Hua Hua. She grows up without her birth mother. She grows up in a world where the other pandas are always just a little bit faster, a little bit stronger, a little bit more sure-footed. Because here's the thing nobody noticed at first. Hua Hua isn't just small. Hua Hua is different. Her right hind leg turns slightly outward, a condition she was born with. It means the muscles there are weaker. It means climbing the tall wooden structures that other pandas scramble up in seconds is, for her, a real effort. It means when the other pandas run, she gets there eventually, in her own time, at her own pace, in that slow rolling trot that people the world over have since compared to a rice ball that somehow learned to walk. Her official profile describes her in three words. Short, chubby, and slow. She reads it and continues eating bamboo. Now, around this time, there's a man at the base who's been there since 1999. His name is Tan Jin Tao, and he runs what he himself calls the kindergarten. His job is to look after the one- and two-year-old pandas, the age when they're transitioning from helpless babies into rambunctious little chaos agents with opinions about everything. It's physically exhausting, emotionally consuming, and he loves it completely. He's been doing this so long that the pandas he first raised have gone on to become parents themselves, then grandparents, which means, technically, Tan Jin Tao's seniority in the panda family tree has risen several generations. The running joke at the base is this. The pandas come and go like a flowing river, but Grandpa Tan stays forever. They call him a ferryman. He receives the young ones, raises them up, and sends them on their way. And then he starts again. People started calling him Grandpa when he was in his 30s. In late 2021, a small panda with a slightly sideways walk waddles into his kindergarten. He notices right away that she's different, slower, softer in a way that isn't just personality. She physically can't keep up with the others during feeding time. While her peers grab bamboo shoots with confident, practiced swipes, she peels hers slowly, methodically, almost meditative. And then someone takes it. Tan Jin Tao starts giving her separate meals. He places the food directly in her hands. He doesn't make a big deal of it. He doesn't announce it to anyone. He just makes sure that this particular small panda, who was born with a little less than the others, doesn't go hungry. But here's where it gets interesting. Because Tan Jin Tao notices something else about Hua Hua. Her hind legs aren't just a cosmetic difference. They're a functional one. If she doesn't use them, if nobody encourages her to strengthen them, she's going to keep falling further and further behind. She'll never be able to do the things that pandas do. So every afternoon, after the general feeding and cleaning and the endless logistics of managing a kindergarten full of bears, Tan Jin Tao takes a small apple. Or a wotou, a steamed corn bun that pandas absolutely lose their minds over. And he holds it just high enough that Hua Hua has to reach up, has to push against the enrichment structure, has to, for a few seconds at a time, use those weaker legs. She does it. Every time. Because there's an apple at the end, yes. But also because it's him asking. He also develops what the internet will later call the Gor Lai technique. In Sichuan dialect, Gor Lai means come here. When Tan calls Hua Hua, she might look up. She might not. She's busy. She's eating. She's being a panda. But the moment he calls out Gor Lai in that particular booming, affectionate Sichuan voice, something in her recognizes it completely. Her head swings toward him. Her small body begins its unhurried approach. The internet theorizes, not entirely in jest, that Hua Hua has simply decided that Gor Lai is her actual name. She knows something good is coming. She knows who's calling. By 2023, something unexpected starts happening at the Chengdu Panda Base. The lines are longer. Then much longer. Then completely bewilderingly long. People arrive at the gates at 6 in the morning, an hour and a half before the base even opens, just to secure a spot near Villa 6, where Hua Hua lives. At its peak, visitors queue for three hours or more just to watch a small, fluffy panda eat bamboo at her own pace. Some have flown in from other countries. They stand in the morning humidity, clutching their tamarisk, knowing that when Hua Hua blinks her large, triangular eyes in their general direction, something in their chest will loosen. They're right. It always does. What is it about her? Nobody fully knows. She's cute, yes. But other pandas are cute. What Hua Hua has is something harder to name. When another panda cakes her bamboo, which happens in video after famous video, she doesn't fight back. She just reaches for another shoot and starts again. When the world rushes past her at its normal speed, she moves through it at her own speed and she doesn't apologize for it. People who are very tired find this profoundly restoring. The base sees a visitor increase so significant that Chengdu becomes one of the top 10 tourist destinations in all of China. An ice cream shaped like Hua Hua sales out before noon every day. In April of 2024, the city formally appoints her Honorary Director of the Cultural Tourism Bureau, complete with official certificate. Her credentials are listed. Full-time PhD student at the kindergarten. Former promotional ambassador for the Chengdu Summer University Ed. Special guest on CCTV's Spring Festival Gala. She eats her bamboo and lets the world sort itself out. But wait. Because while all of this is wonderful, there's a moment we need to stop at. A moment from September 2023 that most of the fans know about, but that cuts deeper the more you think about it. Hua Hua's mother, Cheng Gong, dies. She is 24 years old. She has been found in good health by a night shift keeper on a Saturday evening. Normal intake, normal weight, normal everything. By Sunday morning, she is gone. The base releases a statement. The internet, in multiple languages, goes quiet for a moment. Here's the detail that matters. Cheng Gong was the oldest mother in the base. She had been a mother nine times. She had given birth to Hua Hua at a stage when nobody expected her to survive the pregnancy, let alone raise another cub. She had tried her best and then the world had taken over from her. And now she was gone. Now Hua Hua doesn't know this in the way we know things. She doesn't understand death the way we do. But she did grow up without her mother. She did grow up being smaller, slower, different. She did grow up in a world that moved faster than she did. And every single day, without exception, there was a man in a green uniform who showed up, who held the food at just the right height, who called Golai in exactly the voice she recognized, who made sure that she, specifically her, was not overlooked. There's one more moment that you should know about. One that happened in the very early hours of February 10th, 2024. Lunar New Year's Eve. That night, Tan Jintao isn't at the base. He's been invited to perform at the Spring Festival Gala, China's most watched television program of the year, equivalent in scale to the Super Bowl halftime show and New Year's Eve combined. It is, by any measure, a massive honor. He goes, he performs. Back at the base, a substitute keeper is handling the evening rounds. Somehow, at the end of the night, when all the pandas are supposed to be secured inside, Hua Hua is not counted in. She is left outside, in the outdoor enclosure, alone, on the coldest night of the year. A fan watching the base's live feeds notices it. She posts about it. The post spreads immediately, frantically, to thousands of followers who are also watching, also counting, also realizing that the small triangular shape visible on the night camera is Hua Hua, sitting outside by herself on Lunar New Year's Eve while the rest of the country celebrates with their families. The base responds. She is brought inside. She is physically completely unharmed. The substitute keeper is found responsible and has their contract terminated. But here's what no one could stop thinking about. Tan Jintao finds out what happened. He is on stage, or just off it. He finds out that while he was away, she was left outside. That on the one night he wasn't there, He never spoke publicly about what he felt in that moment. But everyone who has watched him spend years making sure she gets her separate meals, years holding apples just a little higher, years calling guolai in that particular Sichuan voice, everyone understood. There's a phrase that circulates among the panda-based staff about Tan Jintao. The pandas flow like a river. Grandpa Tan stays like a stone. He receives them young and uncertain. He raises them up. He trains them to accept blood draws without fear by associating the process so carefully with food and comfort that they never develop the dread. He watches them grow into their full panda lives. Larger, more capable, eventually parents themselves. And then he starts again with the next small one. He once said, Every panda that I've raised is like my own child. Watching them slowly grow up gives me a great sense of accomplishment. He was asked which one was his favorite. He didn't answer directly. He talked about how each panda has its own personality. How you learn to recognize them from their posture, from 30 meters away without seeing their faces. How when you spend that much time with a creature, you understand something wordless about them. But he mentioned Hua Hua twice. You've probably seen the videos. The one where she's peeling bamboo and it gets stolen for the third time and she just picks up another one. The one where she's sitting in the morning light looking like a perfect little circle. The one where Tan Jintao calls Gua Lai and her small body begins its patient approach. And she tucks herself into his leg and he doesn't move. Just stands there, lets her be heavy against him. Says something quiet in Sichuan dialect that the camera doesn't quite catch. What he says, roughly translated, is Okay, okay, I've got you. Here is what I keep coming back to, thinking about Hua Hua and Tan Jintao. She was born with less. She was born slower, smaller, less equipped for a world that rewards speed and strength and the ability to hold on to things. She was born to a mother who was too tired and too old to keep going, who tried anyway and then was gone. She moved into a world that was already moving faster than she was. And somewhere in there, someone decided she was worth showing up for. Not because she was performing well. Not because she was meeting benchmarks. Not because she was the biggest or the most impressive. Because she was her, specifically, quietly, entirely herself. And that was enough. There is something in the millions of people who watch her videos every day that responds to this at a level beneath language. Something that recognizes in her unhurried bamboo peeling, and her slow, rolling walk, and her complete indifference to whether she's impressive enough. Something that knows this feeling from the inside. The feeling of being in a world that moves too fast. The feeling of being the one who gets left behind. And the incredible, almost unbearable feeling when someone calls your name in a voice you recognize, of knowing that you are not forgotten. Hua Hua doesn't know she's famous. She doesn't know about the queues or the ice cream or the honorary directorship. She doesn't know about the millions of tired people who watch her videos at midnight because something about her slowness gives them permission to breathe. She just knows the sound of his voice. She just knows that every morning, he comes. What Tan Jintao does isn't glamorous. He shovels. He carries bamboo. He washes his hands a precise number of times before feeding. He measures formula temperature against his wrist. He lives in a small room near the enclosure, so that if something stirs in the night, he's there within seconds. He has spent more than 20 decades doing this, for panda after panda, most of whom the world never knew by name. He does it because he believes the creatures in his care deserve the very best version of what he has to give. The version where you hold the apple just a little higher, because you know there's a small panda who needs to use her legs. The version where you call gulai loud enough that she can always find you, in that Sichuan voice that sounds, to her, like the most reliable thing in the world. In a noisy, fast-moving, impatient world, there is something deeply necessary about a person who simply consistently shows up, who sees which one needs the extra meal, who figures out the exact height to hold the apple, who makes sure that when she hears gulai, she always has a reason to come. Hua Hua is sitting in Villa 6 right now, probably. She's probably eating bamboo, or thinking about eating bamboo, or resting from the very tiring activity of eating bamboo earlier. Her right hind leg is turned slightly outward. Her fur is the unusual pure white that makes her glow a little in the morning light. She is shorter than every other panda in her cohort. She still moves at her own pace, through her own world, entirely indifferent to speed. She is, by every standard that matters, exactly herself. And every morning, without fail, a man in a green uniform arrives, calls her name, and she turns her head toward the sound. Because she knows something good is coming. And she knows exactly who's calling. And she begins her slow, unhurried walk. Every morning. Without fail. If you've made it to the end of this video, I think you already know why you watched it. Maybe you're tired. Maybe the world has been going faster than you can keep up with lately. Maybe you needed to spend a few minutes with a small, round panda, who just keeps peeling bamboo, even when it gets taken. Because what else is there to do but reach for another one? If someone in your life is like Tan Jin Ta, if someone has been quietly showing up for you, holding the apple a little higher, making sure you don't go hungry, maybe today is a good day to tell them. And if you're the Hua Hua in this story, you are not behind. You are moving at exactly the right speed. And somewhere out there is a voice calling, Guli. And when you're ready, it's safe to walk toward it. Take care of yourselves. The pandas will take care of the rest. If this story made you think of someone, a friend who's been having a hard time, a person in your life who just keeps going no matter what, send it to them. Sometimes the right story finds people at exactly the right moment. You might not know how much it matters, but it might matter a lot. If you want to be the first to know when the next story drops, whether it's about Hua Hua's sister He Ye, or the panda who refuses to grow up, or whatever comes next, the notification bell is right there. These stories come out quietly, without any fanfare, just like a certain someone we know. Don't miss them. See you next time.