Tohui and Xin Xin live at the Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City along with four other giant pandas Although far from their native home in China the giant pandas seem happy in Mexico Comfortable enclosures plenty of food and water and good care from the zoo staff provide the pandas with everything they need The zoo where the pandas live is located in chapultepec chapultepec Park a large wooded area in the middle of Mexico City The word chapultepec means grasshopper grasshopper hill and like many words in Mexico comes from Nahuatl the ancient language of the Aztecs who once lived there Tohui’s name means boy and is from the Tarahumaras Tarahumaras language which is spoken in parts of northern Mexico today She was given this name shortly after she was born and kept it even after the zoo staff discovered discovered that she was female All the other pandas there have been given Chinese names Grasshopper statue in Chapultepec Park Mexico City
The climate in Mexico City is hotter and drier than it is where wild pandas live in China At night and in the middle of the day the pandas at the zoo stay in large rooms where they have platforms for sleeping and space to move around In the cool hours of the morning and sometimes again in the late afternoon they go out into grassy outdoor enclosures for exercise and fresh air Glass panels allow the zoo visitors to view the pandas and let the pandas watch the people too The Chapultepec Zoo has the largest giant panda exhibit outside China It also has had more success with the natural breeding of pandas in captivity than any other zoo No one knows exactly why the pandas have bred so well in Mexico but part of the reason is surely
a combination of good care and buena suerte Spanish words meaning good luck The first giant pandas came to Mexico City in 1975 as a gift from the People’s Republic of China They were a young male named Pe Pe and a female named Ying Ying They mated successfully in 1980 but their offspring died after a few days However in 1981 these two pandas produced Tohui who survived Then much to everyone’s delight Pe Pe and Ying Ying continued to have healthy babies every two years after that Liangliang a male was born in 1983 Xiú Hua a female was born in 1985 and Shuan Shuan a female was born in 1987 Pandas do not usually live much more than 20 years Pe Pe died in 1988 and Ying Ying in 1989
