World - Pandas take centrestage on Olympic Eve

Beijing: With only two days to go for the Olympics to start, the Chinese capital is abuzz with excitement and anticipation alike. The air has miraculously cleared, 40 million potted plants are in place to beautify the cityscape, and special protest pens have been set up for any malcontents to hold demonstrations in. Tens of thousands of foreign visitors are pouring in.

But it is not only the stars of the sporting world and the visiting heads of state who are making headlines here. As is inevitable in China, pandas are stealing some of the Olympics limelight as well.
A little distance from the main venues, thick crowds gather through the day to sneak a peak at a cuddly crew of eight giant pandas, specially brought from the Wolong Nature Reserve in Sichuan province for the duration of the Games.
Wolong hosts China’s largest captive breeding programme for pandas, as well as more than 140 wild pandas. All, save one, of the reserve’s captive pandas survived the quake, but it is unclear how many wild pandas may have perished.
The “Olympics pandas,” as they have been dubbed, on display at the Beijing zoo are thus attracting even more than their usual share of sympathy, being seen by some visitors as a symbol of survival in the face of tragedy.
Adjustment

According to Wu Zhao Guo, the director of the zoo, although the pandas suffered from nervous exhaustion in their first few days in Beijing, they have slowly adjusted to their new setting and seem to have left the trauma of the quake behind them. Indeed, while they gobble up long stems of bamboo and cavort around their lush pens in play, they look anything but unhappy. Some six million people are expected to visit the bears by November, when they will be sent home.
In China, the giant panda, an animal that is exclusive to its bamboo forests, has long been part of a nationalistic discourse that has imbued it with a unique symbolic importance. Saving pandas has been a priority for the government, and no costs have been spared — while animals such as the Yangtze river dolphin have died out.
Gifting pandas is a favoured tool of Chinese diplomacy: over the years panda power has come to rank alongside ping-pong diplomacy in achieving diplomatic breakthroughs.
Pandas, moreover, have a long and honourable Olympics history. The first pandas ever to be sent abroad went to Los Angeles for the 1984 Olympics — the first Games China participated in after a gap of over three decades.
Duty
An explanatory plaque at the Beijing zoo attributes Beijing’s successful bid for the 2008 Olympics in part to the popularity of a panda display held in Moscow in July 2001 during the bidding process. “The giant pandas perfectly fulfilled their historic duty,” the plaque concludes.
For panda enthusiast there is further good news. According to the Director of the Zoological Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Wei Fuwen, the future of the once threatened animal is increasingly looking secure. His recent research strives to prove that the panda is not at an evolutionary dead-end as was thought.
While the official figure for giant pandas in the wild is around 1,600, up from some 1,000 a decade ago, Professor Wei’s research puts the number at 2,000-plus. He holds that although wild pandas may not quite be out of the woods yet, they are no longer critically endangered.
While the debate on the panda’s future continues, the eight Olympics bears seem content to munch on their bamboo and pose for the cameras, seemingly unaware of the excitement they are causing.