On August 30, 2026, Taipei Zoo held a celebration for the 22nd birthday of Yuan Yuan (圆圆), the panda "birthday star" who crossed the strait as a gift to Taiwan.
Keepers worked early to prepare a special birthday meal: a "22"-shaped sugarcane candle, an ice bowl filled with carrot chunks and grapes, and a little-train themed cake. At 9 AM, Yuan Yuan slowly stepped into the activity area, sniffed the food, grabbed her favorite sugarcane candle, and devoured it voraciously in front of fans. "So cute!" "Happy birthday, Yuan Yuan!" visitors whispered their wishes from behind the glass.
The birthday meal was carefully designed around Yuan Yuan's dietary preferences, balancing ingredients with behavioral enrichment to encourage the panda's natural foraging, grasping, and gnawing instincts.
Yuan Yuan and her partner Tuan Tuan have made their home at Taipei Zoo since 2008, giving birth to cubs Yuan Zai in 2013 and Yuan Bao in 2020. Today her two daughters are 13 and 6 years old. In 2022, 18-year-old Tuan Tuan passed away from an illness.
For a giant panda, 22 years old is considered senior age. In last November's annual health check, Yuan Yuan's heart and digestive organs were generally stable, but her eyes, kidneys, and spine showed signs of aging. The zoo has placed her in a senior-care and key-observation program, recording these signs of age in her daily monitoring file.
Cross-strait panda conservation cooperation continues to run deep: since Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan settled in Taiwan, Taipei Zoo has worked closely with mainland conservation institutions in breeding, physiology, and medicine, with ongoing staff exchanges and technical cooperation.
As the celebration wound down, Yuan Yuan paused mid-meal, turned, and ambled back inside to rest — while fans lingered by the glass wall, reluctant to leave. The whole event was streamed to the cloud so fans unable to visit in person could share the joy.
