On the day before my last day in Dalian (yeah, I’m in Dalian now), I visited the Dalian Forest Zoo. It’s the biggest zoo in the province, and AAAA-recommended, too. A few minutes into the zoo, it struck me as odd that the forest zoo had fewer animals than the small zoo of Houston. A few pigeons there, a monkey there, but it seemed were traveling on a rural road.

As I waited for my mom to go to the restroom, I observed the map and decided to go to the pandas, which were unique in China. After thirty minutes of looking, walking, observing, we finally stumbled upon a sign that told us the pandas were eighty yards away.

But as soon as I looked, I saw that it was far from the picture on the back of the map, which showed a cute little panda next to two furiously giggling girls. Instead, what I saw was a great sleeping oaf.

The black and white panda was sleeping like a couch potato. But for a lot of stuff I know about them being cute and cuddly and all very elegant (including not looking like an oaf), this one was the opposite.

It was old. It was sleeping. But for a nice panda, the proper manners would be to put your hands under your head and actually look like a panda, but this klutz was sleeping with his hands stretched wide, like what you do before you rampage your mom with a hug.

Furthermore, next to him was a pile of half-finished bamboo. No other pandas were stealing, I noticed.

I also noticed that there were no other pandas.

Hmm. It seemed strange that they would give this lout a pen the size of half my backyard, and I seem to have a small backyard when compared with my classmates.

This place was pretty big. Nope, sorry. Not big.

Huge. With few animals.

And a sleeping panda.