How the Panda got its beautiful eyes

Some think that a Panda bear is just a Polar bear that got into a fight and ended up with two black eyes but it’s not true.  In fact, Panda Bears were once brown bears but one day, a Panda bear that belonged to the Goddess Chuangmu, Goddess of the bedchamber, went into her makeup case and started to put on her white powder and her dark mascara and, looking in her mirror, thought,

“Oh, don’t I look pretty?”.

And Pandas might have red lips today if the Panda had gotten hold of the Goddess’s lipstick.

However, just as the Panda was about to pick up the lipstick, Chuangmu came home and seeing white powder and black mascara everywhere, got very angry.

“What a mess that Panda has made”, she said, shaking and leaping in the air with anger.

Of course, the Panda ran and hid itself but, because it had stepped in white powder it left a trail of white paw prints across the floor and, following the paw prints, the goddess caught it.

Now because Chuangmu looked so angry the Panda started to cry until its mascara ran which is why the markings round a Panda’s eyes are not just dark but long.

But the Pandas tears did not move the Goddess, in fact she punished the Panda, saying that it would never be able to remove the make-up and that even its children would be born wearing it.

But then the Panda looking in the mirror again thought to itself,

“Well that’s not such a bad thing. I think I look quite nice”.

Unfortunately the Panda made the mistake of thinking this out loud and, hearing it, the Goddess thought that she must punish it in some other way.

So the Goddess asked the Panda, “What is the food you hate eating the most?”.

Now the food that the Panda hated the most was fish but the Panda was afraid that the Goddess might make it eat nothing but fish so instead it told her its favourite food which is Bamboo shoots and leaves,

“Yuk”, it said, pulling a face and pretending to have something bad tasting in its mouth, “I hate bamboo shoots and leaves”.

So then the Goddess said that the Panda would eat nothing but Bamboo shoots and leaves from that day forwards and that is why, even today, Pandas eat only bamboo shoots and leaves for breakfast, lunch and dinner which is okay because they like them so much.

Fortunately, then the Panda had the good sense to keep quiet unlike her poor friend the anteater who used to eat normal food like apples and bananas until he made a comment about the size of Chuangmu’s nose.