DA PAN LORE: HIS SAD BACKSTORY EXPLAINED
Table of Contents
Da Pan feeds the kids of Wuling and spends his money on them. Years ago, under his real name, he walked out of the Hongshan Academy of Sciences on the day its elders voted to leave their dead behind.
Most players know him as the big friendly panda with the iron wok, the one who shows up on Dijiang offering to cook because “the Dijiang cafeteria wasn’t hitting the right place.” His coworkers know one more thing about him. He’ll listen to anyone’s story for hours. He almost never tells his own.
His profile files do. This is his story, told in order from the in-game English text.
Endfield Hub is a fan-made resource and is not affiliated with Hypergryph or Yostar.
Short version first: the Da Pan backstory in under two minutes, from our YouTube channel. The full story with every source follows below. More backstories are on the Endfield lore hub.
TL;DR - Key Points
- His real name is Pan Yuan. He was a Tianshi at the Hongshan Academy of Sciences (HAS) before he was anyone’s Uncle Pan.
- He was a prodigy and a nightmare. He played ping-pong with burning explosives and attacked the Academy’s cold storage with a fleet of scrap battleships, out of boredom.
- Then he found a goal. He told his mentor there was “a great mountain within me that must be conquered,” and before thirty he had twelve academic achievements and a nomination for the Vanguard Scientist award.
- 113 people were lost at the Very Large Rift in the early days of the Wuling Science Station. The senior Tianshi voted to stop searching and leave the bodies.
- Pan Yuan stood up against the vote. Only Zhuang Fangyi backed him. He was told “Not everyone is like you, Pan Yuan,” swore at the room, resigned and left Hongshan.
- Years later he came to one of the voters’ funerals, spoke to no one, and left a jar of the old man’s favorite hot sauce.
- Today he runs the LA-ME-DA hot pot shop in Wuling, fixes the town’s meters and pipes, raised Lifeng, and spends his money on the local kids.
- He still won’t talk about it. Asked about the Academy, he tells a joke.
Who Is Da Pan?
Da Pan is a 5-star Physical Striker in Arknights: Endfield, a greatsword fighter whose skills are named things like “Flip Da Wok!” and “Chop ‘n Dunk!”. His file lists him as an Ursus, born May 19, authenticated by the Hongshan Academy of Sciences, and Oripathy negative. His exam reads Physiological Strength: Excellent, Combat Skill: Standard, Tactical Acumen: Normal, Originium Arts Assimilation: Excellent.
He joined Endfield’s Specialist Tech Division as an independent, with a recommendation from Chen Qianyu and a letter from HAS. He also asked for, and got, partial access to the canteen.
His HR file is mostly a list of jobs. The verifiable ones: owner of the hot pot eatery LA-ME-DA (the file translates it as “Spicily Huge”), Tianshi at HAS, electrician, carpenter, machinist, and background extra in a film called Fist of Combined Will: Revisited. Two more couldn’t be verified: a stint driving taxis in Simonch, where no license or record exists, and three days as an “ornamental burdenbeast stand-in” at La Fantoma.
The HR assistant who interviewed him lost four hours to the taxi and burdenbeast stories before realizing he had never asked about the job Da Pan should remember best:
“While verifying his experiences in HAS, Da Pan became visibly downcast and displeased. But he quickly resumed his smile and deflected the topic with a casual joke. Then he showed me a friendly group photo of him and other ornamental burdenbeasts.” Martin Marvin Malen, Assistant, HR Division
The same note says what he was avoiding: “his disagreeable past with other Tianshi,” and the fact that “Da Pan is still affected by the Science Station incident.” That is where his story starts.
The Prodigy Who Played With Fire
His second profile file is a nomination letter for the Academy’s Vanguard Scientist award, written by his mentor, Luo Shiqiao. She opens by admitting that when the young Pan Yuan knocked on her door asking to join her project team, her first instinct was to turn him down. She had a list of reasons:
“He played ping-pong with explosives, on fire. He also got several veteran (and well respected) Tianshi to perform tap dance on a digital poster of Creative Maolaguo Cuisine Lovers. He built several high-speed battleships from scraps, and attacked our subterranean cryostorage facility with his fleet. The entire building reeked of rotten fins for a month…”
What bothered her wasn’t the pranks. Plenty of young Tianshi pulled them, and she had put herself in the emergency medical bay a few times in her own youth. It was the look on his face when he got caught:
“He is … too smart. I saw disinterested boredom in his eyes when he was caught doing these pranks. After becoming his mentor, I realized that he committed these actions because he could.”
He wanted to prove he was better than anyone else at HAS, “even when it came to pulling off pranks on campus.” A voice line from much later admits the same thing, briefly, before he catches himself: “Back then, no one in HAS dared cross my path. Da Great Pan Yuan ENDED scientific disagreements on the spot and, and… Ugh.”
A Mountain Within Him
Luo Shiqiao tried to send him elsewhere. Other Tianshi had done more in rift research, she told him, and would make better mentors. His answer changed her mind:
“But there is a great mountain within me that must be conquered first. Your projects and research focus are the only things that match my goals.”
“At that moment, I saw confusion, pain, and maybe a subtle dash of cautious hope in his eyes. Maybe my judgment on his character was not entirely correct. Perhaps something changed him.”
The file never says what that something was. It only records what he did with it.
By the time she wrote the nomination, he had “a total of twelve academic achievements” and had met six sustainable development goals for HAS. “Very few awardees from the last ten years have achievements on par with his. And Da Pan is not yet thirty.”
She was fair enough to list the case against him too: “his rather impulsive temperament,” and the time he cooked in the lab and labeled a tub of puffed rice “Reducing Agent,” which “completely wrecked my first prototype!”
In the main story he remembers the same years from the other side of the counter. He used to drink at a small eatery near the Science Station, and he told everyone there that “I, Pan Yuan, would be the one to end the Rift!” The regulars laughed and asked if he planned to hack it to pieces with a cleaver. Only the owner, Old Sen, didn’t laugh. He promised to open his special vintage the day Pan Yuan pulled it off.
113 Lost at the Rift
His third file holds two documents about the same disaster. The first is a funeral speech, and it gives the number. The speaker’s daughter “was one of the 113 who left us in the early days of the Wuling Science Station.”
The second is a repaired audio log from the Academy meeting afterwards. It opens with the decision:
“Dozens of hours had passed. Unfortunately, we have picked up no vital signs in the vicinity of the Very Large Rift. Since we have a unanimous consensus, we shall act upon the decision and cease all SAR operations.”
Search and rescue was over, and the remains would stay where they were. The widow later describes what that meant on her side: she asked her husband, one of the Tianshi in that vote, why they couldn’t bring the children’s bodies home. “He only told me it was impossible.”
Dead or Alive
The consensus wasn’t unanimous for long. The next voice on the tape is Pan Yuan’s:
“Objection! I’m not going to argue whose proposal it was and how it ended up this way! But at least have the common decency to bring our people out, dead or alive! How could we even face their families after this?! Zhuang Fangyi, don’t you dare side with them!”
Zhuang Fangyi didn’t side with them. “I believe Tianshi Pan is right,” she said. “Giving up right now goes against the collective as well as individual spirit espoused by the HAS. I recommend continuing our SAR efforts.”
An elder was surprised the two of them agreed on anything, and then shut them down:
“This isn’t giving up. We simply couldn’t get it done. As Tianshi, you should use the balance of reason and understand this is us weighing the living against the dead. Now, get back to your seats.”
“Couldn’t get it done?! Then think of something to get it done!”
“Not everyone is like you, Pan Yuan…”
The log ends on one line: “[Yanese expletive].”
(Zhuang’s side of the same disaster, the eulogy she gave and the rebuild that followed, is in our Zhuang Fangyi lore post.)
He Walked Out of Hongshan
The widow’s speech tells the rest. In her grief she wanted to “strap myself with explosives and take my husband and those old academicians to the grave,” until two very young Tianshi opposed the vote:
“One was Viceroy Zhuang, and the other was an Ursus. The latter made quite a scene at HAS and soon left Hongshan after submitting his resignation.”
The speech never gives the Ursus a name. The audio log does: the only Tianshi shouting against the vote was Pan Yuan, Da Pan is an Ursus, and his HR file says he is “still affected by the Science Station incident.” His own voice lines circle the same wound without naming it. “There are times when sticking to cold, hard facts could unintentionally destroy someone’s hard-earned career,” he says once. “I tried making up for it, but stubbornness is a cause for regret…”
A Jar of Hot Sauce
The speech itself was given years later, at her husband’s funeral. He “committed his entire life to the Hongshan Academy of Sciences” and died in his sleep in his office one ordinary morning. She hadn’t spoken to him for years. She still hates the Academy for having “devoured my entire family.”
She didn’t expect the Ursus who made the scene to come. He did:
“He grew up and matured. He came quietly, and left just as quietly. He shared no words with anyone … and left nothing but a jar of Mrs. Pepper.”
Her speech ends on it. “At least he had flowers and his favorite hot sauce by his side when he left us.”
Uncle Pan of Wuling
Somewhere after Hongshan he became Uncle Pan, the panda who runs the LA-ME-DA hot pot shop in Wuling. His first profile file is an essay by Chen Qianyu, written when she was small, spelling mistakes and all (“Uncle Pan the Everchenjing”). She describes his sunglasses, his “big white shef apron,” the yellow plastic hard hat, and the deal he offered the local kids: they could eat at his place whenever they missed home.
He fixes power meters, does the plumbing, chops bamboo. The town loves him back; the kids bring fruit and sweets, and “the landlord lowerd his hot pot shop rent.” The essay ends on the line that gives him away:
“One day i ask Uncle Pan why he made no money after working for many years. He told me he spent all the money on food but later i lerned that he spent all the money on the kids…”
He also put spicy sauce in her lunchbox and told her it was magic jam, so she shared it and “everyone got sosejj lips.”
One of those kids was Lifeng. Zhuang Fangyi gave Da Pan the job of training the boy after he lost his parents, and Da Pan confessed he was no good with children. His solution was to buy more than 600 tapes of folk festivals and plays from a Hongshan antique store and let Lifeng watch TV all day. Lifeng picked up a cloth-drying pole one day and moved like a fighter. (The rest of that story is in our Arcane and Lifeng story analysis.) Lifeng still calls him Uncle Pan, says he fixes the prosthetic arm when Zhuang is too busy, and admits: “I’ve always wondered why he chose to retire.”
What He Won’t Say
Perlica’s note at the end of the first file sums him up. People “start spilling their beans” within minutes of meeting him. “But the reverse does not apply. Operator Da Pan rarely talks about his own story.” She adds a second concern: since he arrived, many operators, the Endministrator included, “began putting on significant amounts of weight.”
His voice lines walk right up to the past and stop. On settling disagreements: “Never keep it to yourself. Ugh. I’ll save the story for later. It left a bad taste in my mouth.” On Zhuang Fangyi: “She hasn’t changed. Still forcing herself to act and look tough despite being all soft and mushy inside. Made her miserable, very unpopular and… Ugh. Let’s skip this for another day.” On the people aboard Dijiang who don’t like him: “I don’t care if they’re Tianshi or chefs. Not everyone aboard Dijiang has the time to share a few words with an old panda.”
Back to the Rift
He does go back. In the main story, heading into the North Wuling Exclusion Zone with the Endministrator, he says it out loud: “The Very Large Rift and the Science Station! I never knew I’ll ever come back.”
He finds Old Sen’s eatery and barely recognizes the signboard. Old Sen spent his whole life running it, and he’s gone now. The cask of kohl he promised to open is still there, the seal intact. “I made a promise to my old friend that we’d seal the Rift,” Da Pan says. “I guess I was just blowing hot air. I don’t deserve the kohl.”
His fourth file is a research paper he wrote aboard Dijiang, on Xiranite automation in the Automated Industry Complex, with “cooking” and “food safety” among its keywords. The acknowledgment section is a conversation with the Endministrator, and it’s the closest he comes to saying what he lost:
“It’s kinda funny, really. I’m already forty plus, yet I’m still obsessed about climbing the highest mountain. There’s a little panda deep within me… If I ever mentioned this to people in HAS, I would end up as joke material. They’d laugh and say how far Pan Yuan had fallen.”
“If you want me to be honest with you, it’s because … your AIC Factory is terrific. I like this tech. From the bottom of my heart. If only we had this tech back then… If I could get this AIC when I was twenty…”
The last line of the file is his: “You’re right. It’s never too late…!”
The mountain he told his mentor about is still there. So is the Academy: on his last visit to Hongshan, he says, “my Master did everything she could to peg me to a project in the Academy.” He has an unfinished one waiting, and he wants the Endministrator to come along, because “there’s no giving up till I smash that bottleneck!”
Da Pan’s Story in Order
| When | What happened | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Youth at HAS | Pan Yuan, a bored prodigy, pulls pranks “because he could” | File 2 |
| Youth at HAS | He asks Luo Shiqiao to mentor him: “a great mountain within me” | File 2 |
| Before thirty | Twelve academic achievements; nominated for the Vanguard Scientist award | File 2 |
| Science Station days | He tells Old Sen’s eatery he’ll be the one to end the Rift | Main story |
| The incident | 113 lost at the Very Large Rift; the Tianshi vote to stop the search | File 3 |
| The vote | He objects, Zhuang Fangyi backs him, he is overruled and swears | File 3 audio log |
| After | He makes a scene, resigns and leaves Hongshan | File 3 funeral speech |
| Wuling | Opens LA-ME-DA, raises Lifeng, spends his money on the kids | File 1, Lifeng’s file |
| Years later | Attends a voter’s funeral in silence and leaves a jar of Mrs. Pepper | File 3 funeral speech |
| Endfield | Joins Dijiang, writes the AIC paper, returns to the Rift | HR Summary, File 4, main story |
The files give no calendar dates, so this table follows the order the text implies. The funeral comes “many years” after the incident; exactly where it falls against his Wuling years isn’t stated.
Sources and Method
Every quote in this post comes from Da Pan’s in-game English text: his profile records (Basic Info, HR Summary and Files 1 to 4), his voice lines, Lifeng’s profile and voice lines, and the North Wuling Exclusion Zone main story missions “Bravely Breach the Hostile Winds” and “Thus Begins the Homeward March.” We’ve lightly punctuated a few quotes where the original used a dash. Two points are our reading rather than the game’s wording. The funeral speech never names the Ursus who resigned; we identify him as Pan Yuan from the audio log, his race and his HR file. And the audio log doesn’t say whose plan led to the 113 deaths (“I’m not going to argue whose proposal it was”), so neither do we.
For his kit, skills and materials, see Da Pan’s operator page. For the Viceroy who stood up with him, read Zhuang Fangyi’s backstory. For more operators whose files hide a hard past, read Last Rite’s backstory and Estella’s backstory.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Da Pan in Arknights Endfield?
Da Pan is a 5-star Physical Striker who fights with a greatsword and a black iron wok. He’s an Ursus from the Hongshan Academy of Sciences, born May 19, who joined Endfield Industries as an independent on Chen Qianyu’s recommendation. In Wuling he runs a hot pot shop called LA-ME-DA.
What is Da Pan’s real name?
His ID name is Pan Yuan. Da Pan is the name everyone in Wuling uses. His files call him Tianshi Pan Yuan in his Academy days, and he still calls himself Pan Yuan when he talks about the past.
Why did Da Pan leave the Hongshan Academy of Sciences?
During the early days of the Wuling Science Station, 113 people were lost near the Very Large Rift. After dozens of hours with no vital signs, the senior Tianshi voted to stop all search and rescue and leave the remains behind. Pan Yuan objected and demanded they bring their people out, dead or alive. He was overruled, made a scene, handed in his resignation and left Hongshan.
Who supported Da Pan in the vote?
Zhuang Fangyi, now the Viceroy of Wuling. In the repaired audio log she tells the room that Tianshi Pan is right and recommends continuing the search. A widow’s funeral speech later names the two young Tianshi who opposed the vote: Viceroy Zhuang and an Ursus who resigned soon after.
What is Da Pan’s relationship to Lifeng?
He’s Lifeng’s master. Zhuang Fangyi gave him the job of training Lifeng after the boy lost his parents. Da Pan admits he was bad with children, so he bought over 600 tapes of folk festivals and plays from a Hongshan antique store, and Lifeng learned his first martial forms from them. Da Pan also maintains Lifeng’s prosthetic arm when Zhuang is too busy.
What is the hot sauce at the funeral about?
Years after the vote, one of the old Tianshi who voted to stop the search died. His widow, who had lost her daughter among the 113, says the Ursus who quit came to the funeral quietly, spoke to no one, and left only a jar of Mrs. Pepper, her husband’s favorite hot sauce.
Does Da Pan ever go back to the Very Large Rift?
Yes. In the main story he returns with the Endministrator to the North Wuling Exclusion Zone and says he never thought he would see the Very Large Rift and the Science Station again. He finds the old eatery where he once promised a friend, Old Sen, that he would be the one to end the rift.
Related Reading
- Arknights Endfield Lore and Backstories: every operator backstory Short next to its write-up, plus all world and faction lore
- Zhuang Fangyi Lore: Her Sad Backstory: the youngest member of the Science Station, who backed him in the vote
- Are Arcane and Lifeng Related?: the Great Wall incident and the boy Da Pan raised on 600 tapes
- Lifeng Complete Guide: his student’s kit, builds and teams
- Version 1.2 Wuling Lore Deep Dive: Wuling, Xiranite and the rift beneath the city
- Last Rite Lore: Her Sad Backstory Explained: the undertaker who refuses to feed on the dead
- Alesh Lore: How He Lost His Eye: the gang leader who lost an eye stopping his two best friends, and the one-eyed fish he never caught
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