The giant panda is popular. I just Googled “Giant Panda” and there were almost 27 million hits, and a Google Blog search resulted in 620 thousand hits. The second Blog listed on that search was the Smithsonian and the post was about giant pandas Mei Xiang and Tian Tian at the National Zoo.
When we took my sister and her youngest daughter to China in 2008, my forty-year-old niece wanted to see the pandas and have a picture taken of one sitting on her lap. That was one area of China we didn’t visit, so that didn’t happen.
The giant panda—because it’s so cute with its black and white coloring—is considered by many of the bear’s fans as docile, but it has been known to attack humans. It probably isn’t a good idea to have a giant panda sit on your lap. An adult male may weigh 330 pounds and a female 275 pounds. After all, it’s still a wild animal.
In fact, China’s giant pandas are considered a living treasure. Although the dragon has historically served as China’s national emblem, recently the giant panda has also served as an emblem for the country. The Chengdu Research Base is working hard to breed the pandas so the species survives.
_______________
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves.
Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.
iLook China 
I hope they continue protecting its habitat. They are so fragile. Big isn’t necessarily robust.
Imagine what might happen to the people in charge of saving the Pandas if they failed. I think they have the motivation to get that job right.