For at least 3,000 years, there have been many Chinese stories and poems about giant pandas. It's said that emperors kept these bears as a sign of wealth. A giant panda's skull（头盖骨）was found in the tomb of a wife of an emperor who lived over 2,000 years ago. Skins and bones of pandas have been discovered in older tombs as well. Today pandas are China's national symbol of peace and friendship.
All the forests of southern and eastern China were once the home of pandas. Now they live in the south-central mountains of Sichuan, Shanxi, and Gansu Provinces. The Chinese government has set up nature reserves in these mountains to protect pandas and other species of plants and animals.
Giant pandas have been known to spend up to 16 hours a day eating. They eat 30 to 40 pounds of food in one day! The reason why pandas eat so much is that bamboo doesn't have many nutrients (营养物). Bamboo is also hard to digest (消化) and pass through their bodies very quickly.
Pandas in the wild might live for 20 years. Pandas live longer in zoos. Hsing Hsing, a panda lived in an American zoo, died at the age of 28. In China, pandas in zoos have lived to be even longer.
