WHEN WU ZETIAN SENT A PAIR OF PANDAS AS A GIFT TO THE RULER OF JAPAN IN ++ 658 (see page 28), she can hardly have guessed that she was setting a precedent. For over thirteen centuries later, China was to dispatch a succession of giant pandas to foreign countries as goodwill gestures, so winning hearts and minds around the world.
Imperial China was now no more than a distant memory, the last emperor having been toppled in 1912. Following its proclamation in 1949, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) now found itself being viewed with fear and suspicion by other nations, isolated behind what Western commentators called the ‘Bamboo Curtain’. Although it was largely content to be self-sufficient, the PRC still wanted contacts in the outside world, and what more reassuring emissary could there be than the giant panda?
By general consent the cuddliest and most engaging of animals, the giant panda was uniquely Chinese. No other country had anything like it, and its appeal effortlessly transcended national, cultural and political boundaries – for adults as much as for children – everywhere in the world.
So it was that, from the 1950s, the authorities of the PRC began giving pandas to zoos in foreign countries as a way of building friendships and forging bonds. To begin with, pandas were sent only to those countries with which relations were already comparatively good, but by the 1970s, the programme was becoming more ambitious.
SYMBOLS OF HOPE
In 1972, the giant pandas Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing brought a bit of warmth to the Cold War. Presented to US President Richard Nixon during an American state visit to China, the pandas were flown to the United States and were settled in the National Zoo in Washington, DC. Nixon’s visit could hardly have taken place if there hadn’t already been a degree of détente, an easing of the previous enmity between the USA and the People’s Republic of China, but the pandas set a happy seal on this thawing of relations.
More to the point, perhaps, their arrival in Washington underlined the importance of the rapprochement for the mass of people who didn’t necessarily follow the foreign pages or the political news. Millions of visitors came each year to see Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, who became much-loved figures. Ling-Ling died in 1992, and when his partner followed seven years later, the zoo was bombarded with letters of condolence. In 2000, two more pandas were sent from China to take their place: called Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, both had been born and reared at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding.
In 1963, Beijing Zoo successfully bred a giant panda for the first time in captivity. Today, pandas are regularly bred at the Chengdu breeding and research centre and in zoos elsewhere.
Although adult pandas have a solitary lifestyle, spending much of their time feeding on bamboo, young pandas are playful and enjoy rough-and-tumble games with their companions.
Although adult pandas have a solitary lifestyle, spending much of their time feeding on bamboo, young pandas are playful and enjoy rough-and-tumble games with their companions.