Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City held a public celebration on 29 June to mark the 35th birthday of Xin Xin, the only giant panda currently living in Latin America and one of the oldest of her species worldwide. Organised by the city’s Environment Secretariat (Sedema) in cooperation with the Chinese Cultural Center and other Mexico-China cultural groups, the event featured a traditional Chinese lion dance, music and a bamboo-and-apple cake tailored to the panda’s diet. Visitors hung ribbons with birthday messages and watched keepers shower the enclosure with apples and bamboo. Xin Xin was born at Chapultepec Zoo in 1990 to a pair of pandas sent to Mexico in the 1970s as a symbol of bilateral friendship. At 35—roughly equivalent to 110 human years—she has far outlived the 15-year average lifespan of wild pandas and is approaching the upper range for animals under human care, which typically peaks around 38 years, according to zoo officials.