The Lady and the Pandas

Nancy Poore Tufts was unusually well traveled in the days before World War II. The daughter of an Army doctor, she passed through the Panama Canal twice, lived in the Philippines with her parents in the late 1920s, and traveled on her own to China.

Life in the Philippines was no hardship. “You have to remember I was a teenager then,” she says, “and there were three young soldiers to every American girl living in Manila, so it did have its benefits.”

But it was her visits to China that would have the greatest impact on her and America’s love affair with pandas.

The link began in 1972, when President Richard Nixon traveled to Beijing for his historic meeting with Mao Tse-Tung. To mark the re-opening of China-U.S. relations, China sent us gifts of the young giant pandas, Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing. Americans were beguiled by the cute, shy creatures, and Washington’s Smithsonian National Zoo welcomed the endangered species.

Soon after the pandas arrived, however, zoo officials recognized a problem. A panda’s diet is 99 percent bamboo; without it they can’t survive. What’s more, if the bamboo isn’t fresh, they won’t touch it.

Word went out. Appeals were made. Ads were placed asking people for any source of fresh bamboo.

Nancy Tufts saw an ad and reached for the phone.

It seems that when her father retired, he built a house in Fort Washington, Md., and Tufts’ parents filled the home with treasures they’d collected in the Orient. A brick from the Great Wall of China is even built into the mantel of the fireplace.

Outside, on the 14 acres surrounding the house, Tufts’ mother planted bamboo because it was fast growing and needed little care. It also reminded her of China. In the humid heat of that long ago summer, the bamboo burst into bloom and within a few years spread over two acres.

Now a hearty 91, she still lives on her family’s riverside home—but never imagined her beloved home would bring her in contact with China again after more than 40 years.

When zoo officials sent out the call for panda bamboo, they knew that more than 2,000 species existed. When they checked out Tufts’ groves they were delighted to discover the species on her property was Yellow Grove bamboo, a variety that grows 20 feet high—and happens to be a panda’s favorite. Zoo staff began traveling to Tufts’ home every week to cut the hundreds of pounds of fresh bamboo needed to keep Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing happy.

In 1999 Ling-Ling died and the zoo people stopped coming, (Hsing-Hsing had passed away a few years earlier.) But within two years, word came that China was loaning America a second pair of young pandas, Mei Xiang and Tian Tian—and once again Tufts has come to the rescue. Early every Monday morning, zookeepers collect nearly 200 stalks of bamboo, weighing up to 600 pounds.

National Zoo spokesman Mike Morgan says, “We don’t know what we’d do without Mrs. Tufts, because each of these two young pandas eat over 50 pounds of bamboo per day. And it has to be fresh.”

Since the panda exhibit opened, more than 1.5 million visitors have seen Tian Tian and Mei Xiang. Although the zoo doesn’t charge admission, it spends $40,000 annually caring for the pandas. But none of that goes to Tufts; she happily donates all the bamboo the pandas need.

Steven Knipp writes from his home in Alexandria, Va.

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