Giant pandas have been around for more than eight million years, and in that time they've gone from elusive mountain dwellers to one of the world's most important symbols of nature conservation. They've also perfected the art of looking adorable while doing almost nothing, which certainly hasn't hurt their popularity.

A new photography book, "Giant Panda: Portraits, Wild Habitats, and Untold Stories", sets out to show what lies behind that famous face. Compiled by China's National Forestry and Grassland Administration and published by ACC Art Books, the 280-page hardcover features more than 80 photographs, alongside texts drawn from interviews with experts, philanthropists, and international partners. Some of the images are pure joy, like a panda that has decided a woven bamboo toy makes a perfectly good hat. Others follow the animals into the wild mountain habitats they call home.

Ahead of the book's release on November 10, 2026, we've gathered a selection of its photos below.

An entire chapter of the book is devoted to individual pandas and their personalities. Readers meet Dai Li, a three-legged panda whose life is a story of resilience, and the young panda Qiao Yi, whose rescue is told in the book and who is known as the "little fairy" of the giant panda world. There's also the story of how villagers in Foping came together to help save a young cub.

Then there's Tao Tao, born on August 3, 2010, the first cub ever delivered at a wild training base in Wolong without any help from humans. Raised in semi-wild conditions by his mother, Cao Cao, and trainers dressed in full panda costumes, he was released into the Liziping Nature Reserve on October 11, 2012, and is widely considered the first captive-born panda successfully returned to the wild.

A giant panda amuses itself by placing a bamboo-woven toy over its head.

The bigger story is the species' comeback. China's first national survey, carried out between 1974 and 1977, counted 2,459 wild pandas, but by the second survey, between 1985 and 1988, that number had dropped to 1,114. Decades of anti-poaching enforcement and expanding forest reserves turned things around, and the 2014 survey found 1,864 pandas in the wild, a rise of nearly 17% in ten years. In 2016, the International Union for Conservation of Nature moved the giant panda from "endangered" to "vulnerable," and Chinese authorities followed with their own reclassification in July 2021.

Five-month-old panda cubs explore the nursery for the very first time.