True affection is “learning to be forgotten”: reconstructing the giant pandas’ journey home.

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When it comes to giant pan­das, the pub­lic often views them through a strong “cute pet” lens. Peo­ple are used to watch­ing these “nation­al trea­sures” eat bam­boo, tum­ble around, and act adorably under care­ful arti­fi­cial care, out­side the glass walls of zoos or in front of live streams. How­ev­er, real wild giant pan­das are by no means green­house flow­ers in cap­tiv­i­ty. They are large, soli­tary ani­mals in the Heng­du­an Moun­tains with almost no nat­ur­al preda­tors, and they must face the laws of nature alone.

In recent years, with the strate­gic advance­ment of the giant pan­da con­ser­va­tion project from “ex-situ con­ser­va­tion” to “rewil­d­ing and release,” espe­cial­ly with the broad­cast of CCTV’s doc­u­men­tary “The Wild ‘Tao Tao’ ” (and its sequel “Return to the For­est”), the growth and home­com­ing of “Tao Tao,” the world’s first giant pan­da born in a rewil­d­ing train­ing base, has cap­ti­vat­ed count­less view­ers. The doc­u­men­tary’s depic­tion of researchers in spe­cial­ly made “pan­da suits” tra­vers­ing the moun­tains and forests sparked wide­spread dis­cus­sion and curios­i­ty online. It is against this grand and explorato­ry sci­en­tif­ic back­drop that the doc­u­men­tary graph­ic nov­el “Return to the For­est,” writ­ten by Xie Hao (one of the authors of “Tao Tao’s Diary”), a front­line researcher in giant pan­da con­ser­va­tion, and illus­trat­ed by car­toon­ist Li Wei, was born.

This lengthy 80-page illus­trat­ed nar­ra­tive, includ­ing a table of con­tents and an after­word, breaks away from the com­mon tropes of tra­di­tion­al ani­mal pic­ture books that “anthro­po­mor­phize” and “child­ishize.” Based on the real-life rewil­d­ing jour­ney of the giant pan­da “Tao Tao” and her moth­er “Cao Cao,” it skill­ful­ly blends doc­u­men­tary data with poet­ic nar­ra­tive, show­cas­ing an exper­i­men­tal visu­al lan­guage and a pro­found emo­tion­al under­tone. It pos­es a thought-pro­vok­ing eco­log­i­cal philo­soph­i­cal ques­tion to read­ers: in order for wild ani­mals to tru­ly “become them­selves,” humans must restrain their desire to inter­vene, take a step back, and even learn to be for­got­ten.

A fusion of documentary and poetic elements

The remark­able qual­i­ty of *Return to the For­est* lies in its seam­less inte­gra­tion of sci­en­tif­ic archives and the epic sto­ry of a giant pan­da’s growth. The rewil­d­ing and release of giant pan­das is a high­ly data-dri­ven, mon­i­tor­ing-inten­sive, and log­i­cal­ly rig­or­ous sys­tem engi­neer­ing project. Before “Tao Tao,” Chi­na had attempt­ed the first gen­er­a­tion of rewil­d­ed giant pan­das, “Xiang Xiang,” pri­mar­i­ly through “arti­fi­cial assis­tance and inde­pen­dent train­ing.” Xiang Xiang’s fate after release into the wild drew wide­spread atten­tion. It is gen­er­al­ly believed that his adapt­abil­i­ty to the wild was insuf­fi­cient, pos­si­bly relat­ed to a lack of mater­nal guid­ance and lim­it­ed expe­ri­ence with com­plex envi­ron­ments and com­pe­ti­tion, ulti­mate­ly lead­ing to his unfor­tu­nate demise. This painful les­son prompt­ed the Giant Pan­da Con­ser­va­tion and Research Cen­ter to shift to a new rewil­d­ing mod­el rep­re­sent­ed by “Cao Cao” and “Tao Tao,” empha­siz­ing “moth­er-led cub” care.

The work does­n’t shy away from these hard-core sci­en­tif­ic back­grounds, but rather uses them as “time anchors” for its lit­er­ary nar­ra­tive. On the title page, the left side fea­tures a metic­u­lous­ly detailed map of the south­west­ern moun­tain­ous region of Chi­na and an expla­na­tion of its cli­mate dis­tri­b­u­tion, while the right side shows the red pan­da pro­tag­o­nist hid­ing behind a bas­ket, estab­lish­ing the tone of inter­wo­ven sci­ence and sto­ry from the very begin­ning. When recount­ing Tao Tao’s wilder­ness jour­ney filled with unknown chal­lenges, the text embeds pre­cise phys­i­cal data: at birth, it weighed only 205 grams and was 11 cen­time­ters long; at two months old, it weighed 3350 grams; its pre-release phys­i­cal exam­i­na­tion showed it weighed 40 kilo­grams; and by the time it was recap­tured in the wild at the end of 2017, it had grown into an adult male weigh­ing 115 kilo­grams. These orig­i­nal­ly cold sci­en­tif­ic records are trans­formed into mile­stones in Tao Tao’s life pro­gres­sion with­in the book.

Mean­while, the text and images ele­vate the oth­er­wise dry footage, reliant on 24-hour sur­veil­lance cam­eras, into a poet­ic tale of spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing. Real footage shows Tao Tao endur­ing tor­ren­tial rain alone in the mud or seek­ing shel­ter in trees for extend­ed peri­ods (some­times more than a day). In this book, these behav­ioral records become inde­pen­dent tri­als, each imbued with the spir­it of a “hero’s jour­ney.” Sci­ence ensures a sol­id frame­work for the sto­ry, while poet­ic nar­ra­tion gives it rich flesh and blood, allow­ing read­ers to tru­ly feel the pow­er­ful vital­i­ty of wild ani­mals build­ing con­fi­dence amidst storms.

The real wilderness stripped of its “fairytale filter” through color experiments

To high­light the authen­tic wilder­ness, *Return to the For­est* exhibits a high­ly exper­i­men­tal approach in its visu­al expres­sion. The car­toon­ist aban­dons the con­ven­tion­al approach of roman­ti­ciz­ing or child­likeiz­ing the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment. Instead, he uses a com­bi­na­tion of water­col­or and line draw­ing to pre­serve the struc­tur­al feel and the damp­ness of water stains, recre­at­ing the oppres­sive, com­plex ter­rain and soil tex­ture of the Heng­du­an Moun­tains’ high moun­tains and deep val­leys. This real­is­tic treat­ment, which imbues the images with a touch of “dis­com­fort,” declares to the read­er that true nature is not a care­free par­adise, but a test­ing ground where “sur­vival of the fittest” is the ulti­mate test.

It’s worth men­tion­ing that the book con­structs an “eco­log­i­cal emo­tion­al sys­tem” that departs from the tra­di­tion­al black-and-white view, espe­cial­ly in its cre­ative use of “pur­ple.” Dan­ger in the book is often rep­re­sent­ed by a pur­plish-blue hue, some­where between warm and cool. When Tao Tao encoun­ters a civet cat at night, or faces an unknown storm, the scene is shroud­ed in a lay­er of pur­plish-gray or pur­plish-blue light and shad­ow.

Here, pur­ple does­n’t sig­ni­fy a fierce, sub­stan­tial attack, but rather points to a “world yet to be under­stood” and “poten­tial uncer­tain­ty.” It pre­cise­ly cap­tures the sub­tle psy­cho­log­i­cal turn­ing points in the growth of wild ani­mals: when the world is no longer as absolute­ly safe as their moth­er’s embrace, the cubs must learn vig­i­lance and judg­ment. As Tao Tao grad­u­al­ly adapts to the envi­ron­ment and takes con­trol of its ter­ri­to­ry, the col­or palette tran­si­tions to a blue-green sym­bol­iz­ing “sur­vival and vig­i­lance,” and a bright, warm yel­low-green rep­re­sent­ing “adap­ta­tion and inte­gra­tion.” This method of using col­or to depict psy­cho­log­i­cal expe­ri­ence allows read­ers to attempt to mea­sure the unknown wilder­ness from the ani­mal’s sub­jec­tive per­spec­tive.

““The Hidden Hand of Humanity””

Any­one who has fol­lowed the giant pan­da rewil­d­ing project or watched relat­ed doc­u­men­taries will undoubt­ed­ly remem­ber the researchers wear­ing black and white pan­da suits, some­times even smeared with pan­da feces and urine. In pub­lic dis­cus­sion, this is often seen as a form of exot­ic or slight­ly com­i­cal dis­guise, some­times even spark­ing anthro­po­mor­phic jokes about whether pan­das can actu­al­ly see through humans. How­ev­er, in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty, this is a very seri­ous mat­ter of “dehu­man­iza­tion con­tact” and “imprint man­age­ment.” Its core pur­pose is to ensure that cubs do not per­ceive humans as safe com­pan­ions or food sources dur­ing their growth; oth­er­wise, they would active­ly approach human set­tle­ments after release, fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant dan­ger and poten­tial­ly unable to inte­grate into wild pop­u­la­tions for repro­duc­tion.

In this book, the illus­tra­tor presents a philo­soph­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant three-lay­ered visu­al trans­for­ma­tion of this “hid­den human hand”: The first lay­er is “dis­guise”: In the ear­ly stages of the sto­ry, the staff feed­ing or check­ing the pan­das are depict­ed as upright-walk­ing “pan­das,” even pos­sess­ing a slight­ly anthro­po­mor­phic, fairy­tale-like qual­i­ty. This per­fect­ly aligns with the cub’s cog­ni­tive perspective—in its eyes, the world con­sists only of its own kind, not humans. This soft­ens the harsh­ness of human inter­ven­tion while pre­serv­ing the tan­gi­ble traces of eco­log­i­cal restora­tion. The sec­ond lay­er is “alien­ation”: When large-scale habi­tat relo­ca­tion or med­ical exam­i­na­tions are nec­es­sary, the true faces of humans final­ly appear. How­ev­er, they are placed with extreme restraint at the top of the pic­ture or in scenes after Tao Tao is anes­thetized. The humans lack facial details and have no inter­ac­tion with the pan­das in their nat­ur­al nat­ur­al space. This sug­gests the exis­tence of humans as eco­log­i­cal man­agers, but they have vol­un­tar­i­ly relin­quished the cen­ter of the nar­ra­tive stage. The wav­ing good­bye to Tao Tao is full of sym­bol­ism. The third lay­er is “era­sure”: In the final release phase of the sto­ry, humans com­plete­ly dis­ap­pear from the pic­ture, and pure wild­ness once again takes over the world.

This grad­ual imagery strat­e­gy responds to a supreme prin­ci­ple of eco­log­i­cal con­ser­va­tion: the pur­pose of human inter­ven­tion in the process of ani­mal rewil­d­ing is so that humans can one day com­plete­ly with­draw from it. “In order for ani­mals to become them­selves, humans must not be seen”—this two-year-long sys­temic retreat is a painful process of self-mor­ti­fi­ca­tion under­tak­en by humans in order to repair the eco­log­i­cal net­work they have dam­aged.

Breaking through the anthropocentric view of life

The book’s sub­ti­tle is “Tao Tao the Giant Pan­da’s Jour­ney Home,” but this work com­plete­ly over­turns human­i­ty’s inher­ent under­stand­ing of “home.” In anthro­pocen­tric nar­ra­tives, “home” is often a fixed haven, a shel­ter from the wind and rain. How­ev­er, for wild giant pan­das, enter­ing the wild is nev­er about being trans­ferred to a spe­cif­ic scenic spot, but rather “chang­ing their way of being.”

The book clear­ly states that dur­ing the months of Tao Tao’s wilder­ness train­ing, he moved to six or sev­en dif­fer­ent places with his moth­er: “Life in the wild is nev­er sta­ble; migra­tion can hap­pen at any time.” A real home is full of uncer­tain­ty. Tao Tao had to learn to find dry shel­ter in tor­ren­tial rain, quick­ly climb trees dozens of meters high when he heard the sim­u­lat­ed call of a fake leop­ard, and learn to iden­ti­fy ter­rain and water sys­tems in the unfa­mil­iar Tiantai Moun­tain and Lizip­ing.

As the sto­ry nears its end, when the grand, dou­ble-page spread offer­ing a bird’s-eye view of the moun­tains and forests appears, “Tao Tao,” the absolute pro­tag­o­nist, sheds his hero­ic aura, shrink­ing and dis­solv­ing into the bound­less green for­est. He is no longer a “nation­al trea­sure” imbued with spe­cial sig­nif­i­cance, but rather an ordi­nary node in the com­plex eco­log­i­cal net­work of the Heng­du­an Moun­tains. The sub­se­quent appen­dix pro­vides detailed illus­tra­tions of accom­pa­ny­ing flo­ra and fau­na such as the tuft­ed deer and the yel­low-throat­ed marten. This expan­sive per­spec­tive reveals to us that the giant pan­da is mere­ly an equal par­tic­i­pant in a vast food chain. Return­ing to the for­est is not about con­quer­ing the wilder­ness, but about relin­quish­ing one’s indi­vid­ual des­tiny to the vast land, to the cru­el yet fair laws of nature.

Learn to let go and be “forgotten”.“

This is a mov­ing doc­u­men­tary graph­ic nov­el, which, due to its emo­tion­al under­tones, is a rather uncon­ven­tion­al and restrained “tragedy”—the true price of rewil­d­ing is let­ting go.

This “grow­ing pain” is first man­i­fest­ed from the moth­er’s per­spec­tive, “Cao Cao.” In the first half of the sto­ry, the moth­er and child’s bod­ies fill the inti­mate visu­al space, con­vey­ing a strong sense of secu­ri­ty. How­ev­er, as the rewil­d­ing process deep­ens, Cao Cao’s spa­tial posi­tion grad­u­al­ly shifts, trans­form­ing from a “close pro­tec­tor” to a “dis­tant observ­er.” When Tao Tao is learn­ing to climb a tree and is about to slip, the scene freezes on the moment when Cao Cao not only does­n’t imme­di­ate­ly res­cue him but actu­al­ly “let go.” This behav­ioral restraint metaphor­i­cal­ly rep­re­sents the depar­ture of nature’s great­est yet cru­elest mater­nal role—true growth means no longer being held.

From the per­spec­tive of giant pan­da pro­tec­tors and front­line researchers like Xie Hao, the author of this book, this emo­tion­al tur­moil is even more mov­ing. The doc­u­men­tary showed keep­ers hid­ing in the shad­ows, watch­ing the new­born pan­da Tao Tao strug­gle in the mud and tor­ren­tial rain, their hearts filled with unbear­able pain yet forced to des­per­ate­ly sup­press the urge to inter­vene. They poured count­less efforts into rais­ing it from a mere 205-gram pink ball of fur into a strong wild ani­mal, but their ulti­mate love was to sev­er all ties and send it into the vast, unchart­ed moun­tains, fraught with unknown risks.

At the end of the book, after list­ing a series of calm, ratio­nal, and hard-hit­ting sci­ence reports on habi­tat frag­men­ta­tion and alarm­ing pop­u­la­tion decline, the researchers final­ly could­n’t help but reveal a pro­found sense of com­pas­sion. Look­ing deep into the moun­tains, they uttered poignant con­fes­sions unique to humankind: “If only it were him,” “No, he would­n’t remem­ber me…” These solil­o­quies make us real­ize that researchers have silent­ly swal­lowed enor­mous eth­i­cal sac­ri­fices and the pain of sep­a­ra­tion in their efforts to repair eco­log­i­cal frac­tures. Human­i­ty has poured out all its ener­gy and exhaust­ed the youth of gen­er­a­tions, yet its ulti­mate desire is sim­ply to “com­plete­ly dis­ap­pear” from the lives of the ani­mals it so deeply loves.

“Return to the For­est” makes a valu­able explo­ration in the cre­ation of sci­ence-themed graph­ic nov­els. Through the inge­nious fusion of sci­en­tif­ic doc­u­men­tary and ground­break­ing visu­al expres­sion, it ele­vates a book suit­able for shar­ing with rel­a­tive­ly young read­ers to the lev­el of eco­log­i­cal ethics and phi­los­o­phy of life. It guides human­i­ty to respect the wilder­ness with an equal gaze and to view inter­ven­tion with restraint.

This also offers pro­found insights into human growth and edu­ca­tion. True affec­tion is nev­er about impris­on­ing wild crea­tures for mere obser­va­tion, but rather about grant­i­ng them the right to strug­gle in the wind and rain, and silent­ly watch­ing them roam freely from afar.

Even after that, they nev­er remem­bered us again…

Writ­ten by A‑Jia on March 24, 2026 in Bei­jing

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