Pandas live only in the mountainy forests of the Sichuan area. They are mostly active around dawn and dusk, and have never been huge in number.
They do not live in the traditional Chinese heartland, Sichuan didn’t join China until about 200BC, and remained a hinterland up into the modern day.
Lack of accessibility, being on the periphery of China, and difficulty to encounter will all have contributed.
“Mo” (貘) is the modern Chinese word for tapir, and the South East Asian Tapir which traditionally had range into Southern China is also a black and white, small number, hard to encounter forest animal that lives on the periphery of China.
Other gods and deities aren’t real either. It’s not like they would have imagined a strangely colored bamboo-eating bear they never encountered just because they live nearby
Pandas live only in the mountainy forests of the Sichuan area. They are mostly active around dawn and dusk, and have never been huge in number.
They do not live in the traditional Chinese heartland, Sichuan didn’t join China until about 200BC, and remained a hinterland up into the modern day.
Lack of accessibility, being on the periphery of China, and difficulty to encounter will all have contributed.
“Mo” (貘) is the modern Chinese word for tapir, and the South East Asian Tapir which traditionally had range into Southern China is also a black and white, small number, hard to encounter forest animal that lives on the periphery of China.
Dragons aren’t even real and they have a prominent spot in Chinese history
Other gods and deities aren’t real either. It’s not like they would have imagined a strangely colored bamboo-eating bear they never encountered just because they live nearby