January – 2019 – myPandas

Fu Wa’s and Feng Yi’s second cub born out of season in January 2018 is one year old today! There’s only one post about her in this blog so far, and that was a year ago announcing her birth, and now here we are, about to celebrate her first birthday. She has fans coming in from Japan, Taiwan and Thailand; most of them have been here at some point during her first year, some of them visiting Malaysia for the first time just to see her!

I wonder what name will be on her birthday cake? She still doesn’t have a name. Why? My explanation to visitors in our panda complex: we had a change of government in May 2018 and the ministry in charge, like all the new government’s ministries, has many items on its to-do list and Second Cub’s official name is not a priority on this ministry’s to-do list. But that’s just my explanation, not the official reason.

Second Cub? That’s the name I’ve been calling her since I saw a Second Cup cafe in one of our shopping malls. Second Cup … Second Cub. I know, I have very little imagination, but I digress. Due to her lack of an official name, she has been given various names, including one by her keepers, and one that links her to big sister Nuan Nuan. Today, as she turns one, I’ve decided to stop calling her Second Cub and start calling her Nuan Mei, which means Nuan Nuan’s younger sister. This will do until her official name is announced.

Since her public debut on 26 May 2018 when she was 4 months and 12 days old, I have managed to be at the panda complex on five of the seven public “moondays” during her first year. Here are five photos showing her on the same date in June, July, September, October and December 2018.