Little Panda Wakes Up in Chengdu

The morning light crept through the bamboo-patterned curtains like a shy visitor, tip-toeing across Xiao Mao's wooden floor and climbing up the side of his small bed. Little panda Xiao Mao—his name meant "Little Hat" in Chinese, though his grandmother always said it meant "Little One Who Dreams Big"—stirred beneath his quilt embroidered with dancing pandas and scattered bamboo leaves.

Outside, Chengdu was just beginning to wake. The ancient city, four thousand years old and still wearing her most comfortable slippers, stretched her arms wide and yawned. Somewhere in the distance, a temple bell rang—Dong Temple, Xiao Mao knew, where his grandmother sometimes went to light incense and make wishes. The sound was soft and deep, like a grandfather's humming, and it settled over the city like a blanket made of clouds.

Xiao Mao opened his eyes slowly. The ceiling above him was painted with clouds and flying cranes, a gift from his grandfather before he had become a star in the night sky. The little panda's black-rimmed eyes blinked twice, then three times, trying to remember where he was. Then the smell reached him—ginger, garlic, something sizzling in hot oil—and everything came rushing back.

He was in Chengdu. His grandmother's house. His home.

The room was small but perfect for a little panda who collected wonders like other children collected stamps or marbles. A wooden wardrobe stood against one wall, its doors painted with lotus flowers that seemed to float on painted water. Beside the window, a desk held Xiao Mao's treasures: a jar of river stones from the Jinjiang River, a paper crane that his mother had folded before she left for the big city of Shanghai, and a photograph in a bamboo frame showing three generations of pandas smiling in front of Chunxi Road's famous shopping district.

Xiao Mao swung his legs over the side of the bed and padded to the window in his fuzzy orange slippers—the color of autumn persimmons, his grandmother said. He stood on his tiptoes to reach the latch and pushed the window open.

The view took his breath away, even though he had seen it a hundred times before.

Chengdu spread out before him like a painting that was still being painted, still becoming, still deciding what it wanted to be when it grew up. To the north, he could see the misty shoulders of mountains that had watched over this city since before humans had words to name them. The mountains were purple in the early light, fading to blue where the sky touched them, their peaks hidden in clouds that moved like slow, dreaming sheep. These were the Chengdu Plain mountains, his grandmother had told him, guardians of a land where rivers ran clear and the bamboo grew so thick that pandas had lived for millions of years without ever really needing to leave.

Below the mountains, the city lay in layers of old and new, like pages in a book that someone kept adding to. Far away—so far that the people looked like dots—the towers of Tianfu Square rose into the sky. Even from this distance, Xiao Mao could see the giant panda sculpture standing in the center, its black and white form catching the morning light. The sculpture was called "The Flying Panda," and it looked like a panda that had decided, just for a moment, to become a bird. Xiao Mao had visited it once with his grandmother, and he remembered how its eyes seemed to follow you wherever you walked.

But it was the middle distance that caught Xiao Mao's attention this morning—something was different. On the horizon, where yesterday there had been only sky and mountain mist, strange new shapes were rising. Not the traditional curved roofs of Chengdu's old architecture, nor the modest three-story buildings that lined his grandmother's street. These were tall and silver and strange, with glass faces that reflected the clouds like mirrors. Construction cranes swung around them like the necks of long-necked dinosaurs, and even from here, Xiao Mao could hear the deep thrum of machinery.

"Those are the new buildings," his grandmother's voice called from the kitchen. "Come and eat breakfast, Little Dreamer. The congee is getting cold, and cold congee is sad congee."

Xiao Mao tore himself away from the window and ran down the hallway, his slippers making soft pattering sounds against the wooden floor. The hallway was lined with photographs in red frames—his grandmother's collection of memories. There was one of his great-great-grandfather standing in front of the old city walls, which had long since come down to make room for wider streets. There was one of his grandmother when she was young, standing beside the Jinjiang River with a parasol and a smile. And there was one of Xiao Mao's mother as a baby, held by his grandmother, both of them wearing matching red coats.

The kitchen was warm and smelled like heaven, Xiao Mao thought. Warm and full of good things.

Grandma Li was a small panda with grey at her temples and wrinkles that gathered around her eyes when she smiled—and she smiled often. Her apron was white with tiny pandas printed on it, and her ears twitched happily as she ladled congee into Xiao Mao's favorite bowl: blue with a golden rim, painted with bamboo shoots.

"Come, come, Little One," she said, patting the stool beside her. "Sit. Tell me, did you sleep well? Did you dream?"

Xiao Mao climbed onto the stool, which wobbled slightly because one leg was shorter than the others—a problem his grandmother had never gotten around to fixing. "I dreamed about the river," he said. "The Jinjiang River, and there were lanterns floating on it, and they were all the colors of the rainbow."

"Ah," Grandma Li said, her eyes twinkling. "That was not a dream, Little Dreamer. That was a memory. Your grandfather and I used to float lanterns on the river every year during the Lantern Festival. The whole city would come out, and the river would turn into a river of stars."

"Tell me about the old days," Xiao Mao said, blowing on his congee. "Tell me about Chengdu when you were little."

Grandma Li sat down across from him, cradling her own bowl in her paws. Steam rose between them like a gentle ghost, carrying the scent of ginger and preserved egg.

"When I was little," she began, her voice taking on that particular music it always did when she spoke of the past, "Chengdu was a smaller city. We had walls around us—the city walls, thick and high, built long ago by people who believed walls could keep the world safe. We had narrow streets where neighbors knew each other's names and where the vegetable sellers would call out their prices in songs. We had teahouses on every corner, and people would sit for hours, just talking and drinking tea and watching the world go by."

"What happened to the walls?" Xiao Mao asked, even though he had heard this story before.

"The walls came down," Grandma Li said softly. "Not all at once, but piece by piece, like a slow sunset. They took the gates down first—the gates where people used to pay taxes on the goods they brought into the city. Then they took the wall itself down, brick by brick, and used the bricks to build new things. Now, where the walls once stood, there is a ring road that goes all the way around the city. Cars drive where soldiers once walked."

Xiao Mao tried to imagine it: soldiers walking on walls that went on and on, with watchtowers at each corner. The soldiers would have looked down at the city below, seeing the curved roofs and the narrow streets and the smoke rising from cooking fires.

"But Chengdu is still Chengdu, isn't it?" Xiao Mao asked. "Even without the walls?"

Grandma Li smiled and reached across the table to pat his paw. "Yes, Little One. Chengdu is still Chengdu. You can take down the walls, but you cannot take down four thousand years. Every stone they removed, every street they widened, every building they raised—all of it grew from seeds that were planted here long ago. Chengdu is like a great tree. You can prune its branches, but the roots go dee