Zoo Negara Malaysia has been nominated for four awards at the annual Giant Panda Zoo Awards 2014, including one for Feng Yi in the “Favourite Panda Outside of China” award. I thought I’d celebrate her nomination with some baby photos that I sometimes show visitors to the panda complex.
One of the really great things about having her here in Malaysia is that when I show visitors photos of a panda cub, it is not just any panda cub but one that has grown into the panda they are seeing right there in the panda complex. And it’s not just one photo, but a series of photos I had received from Wolong Panda Club via Pandas International.
Here are the photos of Feng Yi from the time she was a nameless, hairless, blind and deaf cub at three days old through to her first meeting with the media.
I even have one of Fu Wa and his twin Fu Ni who lives in Adelaide Zoo, Australia, from the same media event.
Way before she was officially named Feng Yi, I’d named her Yoong Ping (Forever Peace) in memory of my parents and my niece.
At the media event, the cubs were numbered according to when their births were recorded in the stud book. Fu Ni and Fu Wa were #8 and #9, and Feng Yi was actually #11 but because her older twin, #10, died, she was “promoted” for the event. And she was, and still is, the perfect 10 (well, to me, anyway).
Voting for the Giant Panda Zoo Awards will be from 12 December 2014 to 18 January 2014. You can vote every day. Please vote for Feng Yi in Award 4, Zoo Negara in Awards 8 and 10, Pandas International in Award 9, and also for Feng Yi’s Malaysian adopter in Award 6.