Good morning Pandas!

Thanks for all your comments. We had no idea that so many of you could speak Chinese! Awesome!

We’re in Tibet right now and are visiting Ella’s great-great-great-grandfather Pan Lee. He dresses a lot differently than we do. He doesn’t have normal clothes, but rather an orange cloth that is wrapped around him. He is also bald and has a lot of wrinkles.

He’s also very old – over 100 years! And he wears that orange cloth because he’s a Buddhist monk and lives in a Tibetan monastery.

As we entered the monastery, all we saw were these monks everywhere dressed in orange. But we had no idea which one was Pan Lee! But I had an idea. In the middle of the room there was a giant, bronze gong. I thought I’d give it a bang and yell out Pan Lee’s name.

And that’s exactly what he did. But we never thought that this gong would be so incredibly loud! It was quiet enough to hear a pin drop afterwards. Suddenly, all eyes were on us and Max whispered “Pan Lee?”. Ella’s great-great-great-grandfather responded from the crowd: “Ella, is that you?”. He ran up can gave us both gigantic hugs.

He was so happy that he didn’t even want to let go!

Later that afternoon we were sitting at the monastery garden when Pan Lee told us a compelling story. He must have experienced a lot during his 100 years of living!

He told us the story of why he left Panfu:

Back then I was still young and inexperienced and wanted to see the whole world. I could never stay in one place and journeyed away from Panfu. I wanted to find out about our ancestors. I wanted to see what real pandas looked like – the ones who live in the forest and munch all day on bamboo. So I went to China. I packed my backpack and started my search for real pandas in the forests of China. For days I wandered around, climbing mountains, crossing rivers, and chopping through thick bamboo forests, but I couldn’t find one single panda. I knew that there weren’t many pandas left on this world. Perhaps they were extinct. I had almost lost hope when…

Wait! There’s the gong! Breakfast! We’ll tell you the rest tomorrow!

Be good Pandas,

Max and Ella