The eight "Olympic pandas" have witnessed more than one million visitors since their arrival in Beijing from the Wolong Giant Panda Nature Reserve in southwest China's Sichuan Province on June 5.
"Crowds press six deep up against the glass. Everyone jostles for a position. Cameras flash constantly. The very sight of the pandas makes people grin inanely."
Just in time for the Olympic Games, a pair of giant pandas have been born in China.
Bei Bei and Huan Huan have been named after two of the Olympic mascots because they were born on the second day of the 2008 Games.
The twins were born to 9-year-old 'Qi Zhen', who gave birth after a pregnancy extending over 100 days. The birth took place at the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base, near Chengdu, in Sichuan province.
Eight giant pandas were flown Saturday from quake-ravaged southwestern
China to Beijing, where they will be housed at a new zoo exhibit built
for the Olympic Games, state press said.
The pandas, all two years of age and part of an ongoing baby boom at the Wolong centre, were selected months ago in an Internet vote as the chosen ones to beef up Beijing Zoo's exhibit ahead of the August Olympic Games.
The pandas boarded a China Southern Airlines Boeing 747...in the provincial capital for the two-and-a-half hour flight to Beijing.
Thanks to petsugar, here are some more pics...
I've written before about the mascots for the 2008 Olympics in Bejing, and JingJing, who is the panda mascot.
Now, they've been renamed:
"Beijing has renamed its five Olympic mascots "fuwa", a word that organizers say should be easier for Chinese people to remember and less open to misunderstanding than the former name, Friendlies.
The new name is a transliteration of the Chinese name for the mascots, which means lucky doll. The five mascots represent the Olympic flame, a giant panda, a swallow, a Yangtze dolphin and a Tibetan antelope."
If it ever rains baby pandas, it might look something like this.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, our nation's point man for managing U.S-China relations, visited the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base in Chengdu, China at the end of his official visit.
Panda Politics is being played out between China and Taiwan right now and pandas are China's secret weapon...
So, of course, while there's symbolism to be found in the following pictures... who wouldn't want to hold Jing Jing, the 2008 Beijing Olympics Mascot?
So, I previously wrote that the 5 official mascots for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games were announced and "Jingjing the Panda" is one of them. You can see all 5 official mascots here.
Jingjing is cute and will represent different sports, like so:
It was also decided that it would be cute to name a baby panda from Wolong "Jing Jing" so that she could grow up alongside Jingjing the Mascot as the Olympics draw near.
Here are some pictures of Jing Jing and her mom, Ya Ya:
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