Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Copyright

About the Publisher

ying on her back, with her legs crossed at a jaunty angle, Mao Mao stripped the bamboo shoot with her teeth, then using the soggy stump as a pointing stick, waved it in front of her face.

“Look,” she said, munching methodically on the woody pulp in her mouth. “There’s a giant panda up there in the sky.”

Her daughter An, who was lying by her side and chewing on her own stick of bamboo, raised her eyes to look.

“And it’s being chased by a golden monkey,” she said without surprise, swallowing what was left in her mouth before taking another bite.

“I could watch clouds all day,” said her mother. “They make such interesting shapes. And they’re so quiet, so respectful. When you’re resting, listening to a sea of green bamboo growing, the last thing you want is a noisy interruption.”

“I agree,” said An. “Nobody likes a screaming wind or a crashing wave. Here on the grassy slopes of Mount Tranquil we prefer whispering clouds and the chuckle of a gentle stream.”

“You’re a girl after my own heart,” sighed Mao Mao, brushing a fly off the tip of her black-and-white nose. And with that, mother and daughter snuggled down into the soft bed of rhododendron leaves and prepared themselves for another tiring day of doing nothing.

Then suddenly, from the other side of the bamboo hedge, there was a terrifying scream. The very earth they were lying on seemed to rattle and shake, families of frightened grandala birds took flight and, sitting bolt upright, An choked on her mouthful of pulp. A second scream accompanied by the thundering thump of heavy paw-steps made Mao Mao’s eyes snap open.

“What on earth!” she cried, sitting up and shaking the sleep out of her head by boxing her ears with the palms of her paws. Deep in a fuzzy recess of her brain a motherly instinct was sounding a warning that the scream belonged to her only son – An’s twin brother, Ping. But before she could shout at him to keep the noise down, the bamboo hedge to her right was flattened by a young panda cub, who tumbled through it and landed with a distinct lack of respect on her belly. It knocked the wind out of her, not to mention the chewed bamboo in her mouth, which pinged off Ping’s ear like a bottle top.

Still panting, Ping flipped over and stood up on his mother’s round stomach as if she was nothing more than a grassy knoll.

“Run for your lives!” he yelled, grabbing the stick of bamboo out of his sister’s mouth and tugging at her paw to drag her to her feet. “Your lives are in danger!”

An refused to budge and snatched the stick of bamboo back.

“Don’t just lie there!” yelled Ping. “Mummy, please! Get up! Stir yourself!”

“How can I,” she said calmly, “when there’s somebody standing on me?”

Ping jumped down and prodded his mother’s arm.

“There are poachers right behind me,” he cried urgently. “They’ve got literally millions of panda hides slung across their shoulders.”

“Millions?” she said, raising her eyebrows.

“Well, seven or eight,” admitted Ping. “But there is a look of killing in their eyes. If you don’t want to end up as a rug, follow me now!”

But Ping’s mother was unmoved. She simply snapped off another stick of bamboo from the hedge and resumed her methodical chewing. Ping had never seen such indifference to danger and redoubled his efforts.

“What’s the matter with you two?” he hollered. “Do you want to die?”

Mao Mao leant forward and biffed Ping round the ear.

“Ow!” he cried. “What was that for?”

“You’ve interrupted my meal,” said his mother. “Not to mention the lovely peace and quiet.”

“But there are poachers,” Ping said half-heartedly. Even he appeared to be losing interest in the life-or-death news.

“If there are poachers,” his mother said evenly, “then I’m a panda from another planet; and I’m not, as you very well know, Ping. I am a panda from the Wolagong Nature Reserve, who sits in this clearing in the Serene Forest for fourteen hours a day eating bamboo – a lifestyle, incidentally, which suits me very well, but which, it would appear, does not appeal to you.”

“It’s boring,” said Ping. “And why does nobody ever believe a word I say?”

“Because your lying stinks worse than golden monkey poo,” sniggered his sister, sticking out her tongue at him. “And it’s easy-peasy to spot when you’re lying because your mouth curls up like an ancient lychee into a snooty, ‘Aren’t-I-so-clever’ smirk.”

“You’re not helping, An,” said Mao Mao, before turning her disapproving gaze back to her son. “How many times do I have to tell you, Ping, to stop making up stories.”

“There’s nothing else to do around here,” he protested.

“You could eat bamboo,” she said.

“Oh, whoop-di-do!” Ping cheered sarcastically. “I can eat bamboo and poo forty-seven times a day!”

“There’s no need to be rude,” said his mother. “Giant pandas have lived this way for thousands of years.”

“Well, maybe it’s time for a change,” suggested Ping. “Maybe I wasn’t born to pose for the endless stream of visitors who pass by every day with their cameras. Maybe I am destined to be the first panda in the history of Wolagong who was born to lead a life of excitement and adventure! I have been speaking to my friend Hui and—”

An interrupted him.

“Hui is just a birdbrain,” she said dismissively. “I don’t believe anything he says either.”

“Hui is a grandala bird, who travels the world and knows everything,” Ping corrected her. “And he says that the world is full of interesting animals just waiting to meet me.”

His mother lay back down and contemplated the sky.

“It is enough that water is wet,” she said meaningfully. “It cannot also be fire.”

Ping sighed. His mother was fond of her irritating little sayings. She had a habit of slipping them into a conversation when she wanted the conversation to stop. Deep down Ping knew that she was right. A panda was a panda and he shouldn’t try to be something else. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t dream, did it?

Moving away from his mother and sister, Ping sat down out of their sight and picked up a handful of the bamboo stalks that he’d knocked over earlier when he’d tumbled through the hedge. He was just taking his first bite when there was a scampering and a chattering behind him, and before he could say, ‘What on Wolagong!’ he was surrounded by an excitable troop of golden monkeys.

“What do you want?” he said, knowing full well what the monkeys wanted – what monkeys always wanted. To tease him. Pandas are quiet, contemplative creatures that like to think deeply, but golden monkeys are noisy chatterboxes interested only in tittle-tattle and gossip. In short, monkeys are trouble.

“Hello, Ping,” mocked their leader, Choo. “Having another busy day?”

The other monkeys sniggered at their leader’s brilliant wit.

“Been eating lots of bamboo, have you? Had a few poos? Posed for some cameras?”

The sniggering increased to such a volume that Ping felt the need to defend himself.

“Actually, yes,” he said, bigging himself up. “I have had an extremely busy day, thank you, Choo. Some might even say a heroic day!”

The monkeys gasped and exchanged looks of mock admiration.

“I saw one of the visitors trying to steal a golden pheasant,” Ping continued, “and when I realised that there wasn’t time to call a ranger and that I was the bird’s only hope, I took a deep breath and grabbed on to a creeper and swung through the trees like a stealthy shadow until I was hanging over the top of the villainous visitor. I must have been at least ten metres above his head. Probably more. Anyway, without any thought for my own safety, I let go of the creeper and bravely dropped on to his head, driving the visitor into the ground like a fence post. And after he’d pulled himself out and run away screaming, the golden pheasant put its wing on my shoulder and said, ‘Truly, Ping, you are a great hero. You have saved my life when nobody else could. And if we had a king here in the Wolagong Nature Reserve, you can bet that I’d put you up for the job because you are the best.’ And that’s how I’ve spent my day!”

At the very least Ping was expecting a pat on the back accompanied by a shame-faced apology, but instead, when he turned around, the monkeys were rolling on the ground clutching their bellies and laughing.

“You are such a fibber!” Choo screamed, leaping up into a tree and swinging back into the forest. “The lousiest liar in Wolagong.”

In a trice the other monkeys followed their leader into the trees and Ping was suddenly alone with only the echoes of their cruel laughter to keep him company.

The young panda cub slumped to the ground and rested his chin in his paw as he mulled over his life.

“I hate it when the monkeys are right,” he told himself. “Being a panda IS really dull.”

He felt his mother’s paw stroke the top of his head.

“Do not fear going forward slowly. Fear only standing still,” she said, giving his shoulder a squeeze.

“Actually there’s another saying that’s much more appropriate,” Ping said.

“Really?” she replied. “I’d love to hear it.”

“Do not fear going forward looking like a doodoo-headed ninnyhammer. Fear only being a doodoo-headed ninnyhammer,” he said.

“And is that what you think you are?” his mother asked. “A doodoo-headed ninnyhammer?”

Ping turned and stared at her through black-ringed eyes and couldn’t find a way of saying ‘Yes’ without sounding sorry for himself. Instead he said, “I’m going to bed,” and trotted away with his tiny tail between his legs.

But he couldn’t sleep.

As he tossed and turned on his bed of rhododendron leaves, the long, cold night carved out the truth. His life was standing still. If he didn’t do something exciting soon, he would almost certainly turn into a stone.

But, that night, as luck would have it, his wish for excitement was granted.

ing must have fallen asleep in the end because the next thing he remembered was being woken up by the sound of a twig snapping nearby.

Flashing a look across the clearing, he was alarmed to see that both his mother and sister were asleep in their beds. So it wasn’t them he could hear creeping up on him… in the dead of night… breathing. He could definitely hear breathing. The low rumble of a big cat’s purr.

Ping sat up, his heart pounding like the rat-tat-tat of a Chinese woodpecker. A big cat could only mean one thing.

A snow leopard! A gizzard-guzzling, meat-munching, sinew-slashing snow leopard! And snow leopards ate panda cubs for breakfast every day of the week!

Well, not today. Not if Ping had anything to do with it…

He rolled out of bed as silently as a slithering moon-shadow and sprang to his feet, pushing himself up on to the very tips of his tippy-toes. Then treading as delicately as a mountain shrew, he pushed his way into the field of bamboo and circled round to his right.

His plan was simple. He would creep up behind the snow leopard and take it by surprise. Brilliant. What was it his mother always said? “There is nothing to fear except fear itself.” Ping wasn’t scared. Far from it. He was pumped up to his eyeballs with courage. Then, suddenly, there in front of him, he saw his target: a black-and-white-spotted shape flickering through gaps in the bamboo screen and slinking towards the clearing where his mother and sister were asleep. They would be breakfast unless Ping could save them.

Standing on his back legs, he stretched up and slid a creeper off the branch above his head, all the while keeping his eyes fixed on his target. It was now or never…

Ping pounced!

With a terrifying scream designed to befuddle the snow leopard’s senses, and a cry of, “Claws off my mummy!”, Ping leapt out of the night sky, landed on the back of the animal, and keeping hold of the two ends of the creeper, forced the middle section in between the stalker’s jaws.

Pulling on the creeper like a rein, he tugged the snow leopard sharply to its left, dug his heels into its sides, then rode the beast into the bamboo forest while his mother and sister slept on… safe and – more importantly – saved!

Only when Ping reached the top of a mighty waterfall did he and the snow leopard part company. As the big cat tumbled into the deep pool at the bottom of the fall, Ping, who was standing on an overhanging rock at the top, dusted his paws, shaded his eyes and looked out towards the wide horizon with all the puff and swagger of a mighty hero.

And then he woke up.

His sister was staring down at him, giggling.

“What have you just been doing?” she asked. “You were shouting something about saving your mummy, then punching the air with your paws and bouncing your bottom up and down on the ground as if you were riding a lying-down horse.”

Ping sat up, confused to find himself back in his bed.

“Oh,” he said disappointedly. “I was dreaming.”

“I bet you were fighting a snow leopard,” she sniggered, as if such a thing could never happen.

“I might have been,” said Ping indignantly. He was feeling a little foolish now. One moment he was Ping the Leopard Slayer; the next he was just plain old unexciting Ping again.

“I bet you were winning too,” added An.

“Why?”

“Because it was a dream, and boys who can’t fight are always brilliant fighters in their dreams.”

What annoyed Ping about his sister was that she was such a know-all, who had a knack of knowing everything about everyone, even when she hadn’t been told a thing.

“I jolly well can fight,” he said unconvincingly.

“No, you can’t,” she laughed. “In real life, you couldn’t even fight a fly. Well, you could, but you’d lose.”

“I could beat you!” he said, rising to the challenge.

“No, you couldn’t,” she said, “because I am a lady and I wouldn’t let you fight me.”

“And I am a man and wouldn’t listen to you,” he retorted.

“If you were a man, you would do what a lady said,” she replied primly.

“You’re not a lady,” he scoffed, “you’re my sister, so that doesn’t count.”

“Actually, it counts more.”

“No, it doesn’t. When have you ever said anything remotely interesting that I would want to listen to? Never! That’s when.”

“What about this, then?” she said. “The rat that gnaws at the cat’s tail is asking for trouble. That’s interesting.”

“That’s one of Mum’s sayings, not yours,” scoffed Ping. “And anyway, it’s not interesting because it’s obvious. Only a mad rat would chew on a cat’s tail.”

“Exactly,” said An. “That is why Mummy and I forbid you to get into a fight with a snow leopard because you will NEVER, EVER win!”

All of a sudden, the game was over and An was being serious.

“All right,” said Ping. “Keep your fur on. You’ve made your point.”

“Good,” she said. “Because I am telling you now that if you are bonkers enough ever to take on a snow leopard, don’t expect Mummy and me to scrape you off the forest floor.”

Ping sighed. How could he ever expect to inject a little excitement into his life when his mother and sister were always warning him off danger and telling him to be sensible?

“I’ve got a saying too,” he said glumly. “All food and no play makes Ping a dull panda!”

“Food makes you healthy,” An said smugly.

“Food makes me poo,” said Ping, standing up and disappearing into the bushes. “If anyone wants me, I’m contemplating.”

And so started Ping’s day. It was just like every other day in the Wolagong Nature Reserve: eating bamboo, disappearing into the bushes, suffering the mocking jibes of the golden monkeys and posing for the clickety-clack cameras of the visitors.

Ping’s only real friend in the reserve was an electric-blue grandala bird called Hui, who had glossy feathers that gleamed like polished metal.

Just at that moment, Hui flew into the clearing and landed on the end of the bamboo stalk that Ping was slowly turning round in his mouth like a stick of seaside rock.

“Hui!” Ping cried. “How lovely to see you!”

Ping always liked talking to Hui. It was Ping’s belief that the brightly coloured grandala bird had a colourful life to match, whereas he, Ping, being only black and white, was condemned to a life without colour.

“Exciting news!” tweeted the grandala bird.

Ping pricked up his ears at the mention of excitement.

“I have just overheard the fat ranger talking about a panda exchange programme.”

Wolagong Nature Reserve was looked after by a team of friendly rangers. The fat ranger was the one in charge, not because he was fat, but because he had more buttons on his jacket than any of the others.

“Oh,” said Ping, who had never heard of a panda exchange programme before. “Is that exciting?”

“Well, I think it is,” said Hui. “I overheard the rangers discussing it last night. Admittedly, I was a little distance away, but from what I could make out, they are planning to send one lucky panda from Wolagong Nature Reserve to London Zoo in England.”

“On holiday?” Ping said. “I love holidays!”

“I suppose it is a sort of holiday,” replied Hui. “It will certainly be different. London’s not like Wolagong at all.”

“That’s my kind of town,” declared Ping. “How do I get there?”

“That’s simple,” Hui replied. “We just have to make sure that the rangers choose you!”

Ping’s heart sank. Now that he thought about it, he was sure they’d choose Gao. Gao posed for more photographs than any other panda in the nature reserve. Like Ping, he was still a cub, but he had the cute factor. It didn’t seem fair to Ping that one cub should be cuter than another. He wanted to be cute too. But it was Gao who had the long eyelashes, fat cheeks and a way of looking up at the camera with his big black-and-white eyes that made grown-up visitors turn to jelly and lose their grasp of the English language.

“Oh, Wilma, hurnney, doncha jurst lurrrve that cutesy ikkle-wikkle cubby-wubby!” they cried. It made Ping sick.

But he refused to be downhearted.

“So let’s assume it’s between me and Gao,” he said. “How do I give myself the edge over the pretty poser? How do I convince the rangers to pick me?”

“There’s more to life than being pretty,” said Hui. “Once, when I was flying past a school assembly in New Orleans, I heard the most beautiful sound drifting out of a window. It was a little girl playing the violin. That was when I learned that being talented was far more important.”

“So you think I should learn to play a musical instrument?”

“Possibly,” said the bird.

“Have you ever heard of an instrument called a piano?” asked the cub. “Do you think we could make one of those?”

“Pianos are rather large,” said Hui practically. “If you’re going to learn an instrument, it’ll have to be one that we can make out of bamboo.”

They sat in silence for the next ten minutes while they tried to think of one, but their combined minds drew a blank.

“How are you at dancing?” asked Hui. “I think we should forget music and explore the possibility that dancing might give you the edge.”

“Dancing’s a bit energetic for pandas,” admitted Ping. “Unless I could dance sitting down.”

Hui shook his head.

“I could recite some poetry.”

“Do you know any?”

“Not really, but I could write some.” Ping stood up and placed his paw across his chest in a strikingly theatrical pose.

“There’s nothing I like more

Than a stick of old bamboo.

It gets the juices flowing

More than chewing on a shoe.”

He looked to Hui for approval.

“What else can you do?” asked the wise bird.

They spent the next hour trying to identify those talents Ping possessed that might capture the imagination of the people who ran London Zoo. Would they choose a panda who could scratch his own back, or fold bamboo leaves into interesting shapes, or one that could wash his own toes by walking through a river? Maybe they would favour a whistling panda, or a cloud-counting panda, or a clever panda that knew sixty-three words for bamboo.

Eventually, Ping and Hui had to give in and admit that they did not know the first thing about London Zoo or what would appeal to the people in charge.

“They’ll go for the pretty one, won’t they,” said Ping with a sigh of resignation. “We might as well give up now. They’ll choose Gao, I know they will.”

Suddenly, Hui jumped into the air and flapped his wings in a flurry of excitement.

“I’ve got it!” he cried. “A letter! A letter!”

“Which one?” asked Ping. “I know lots of them. A? B? M? T? U? V?”

“No. You write them a letter.”

“Me? Write a letter? To whom?”

“The pandas who live at London Zoo. You write to them and ask them what life is like there. And when they write back and tell you, you’ll know what it is you have to do to become the perfect panda for the exchange.”

It was a glorious plan and one that Ping could not keep to himself for a moment longer. He ran to his mother, Mao Mao, and blurted it out. He even begged her to help him compose the letter, but to his surprise she refused.

“Help,” she explained, “is the thief of self-knowledge.”

Ping scratched his head.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“A dragonfly tastes sweeter to a frog when snaffled by its own tongue.”

“Why can’t you ever speak normally?” he squeaked. “Will you help me write the letter or not?”

“It is better to travel alone, Ping, for only then will you know when you have arrived.”

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