Official White House Photo by Amanda Lucidon
Today Mrs. Obama posted on her travel journal “Today is the last day of my trip, and I couldn’t leave China without seeing the Chengdu Panda Base”. The First Lady along with daughters Sasha and Malia and her mother Mrs. Robinson visited the Chengdu Panda Base, a location where scientists study about 50 pandas ranging in age from infancy to adulthood. Their goal is to increase the population through breeding, conservation and research on how the bears live and grow. Mrs. Obama even fed apples to five giant pandas and held a yearling panda. I thought it was great that in her journal she discussed the history “Panda Diplomacy,” China’s use of giant pandas as diplomatic gifts to other countries. This practice of gift-giving dates as far back as the Tang Dynasty when Empress Wu Zetian (625-705) sent a pair of pandas to the emperor of Japan. …. But one of the most famous examples of “Panda Diplomacy” was during the Nixon Administration.
In 1972 The Nixon Administration went to China to open relations with the United States, and during this historic journey Mrs. Nixon mentioned to Chinese Premier Zhou En-lai how much she enjoyed seeing the pandas. Following that exchange, one of the most popular gifts ever to be received by the United States from China arrived: a pair of giant pandas Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing! Nixon responded by sending back a pair of musk oxen, Milton and Matilda. 20,000 people visited the pandas the first day they were on display at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. and an additional estimated 1.1 million visitors also came to see them the first year. The pandas were wildly popular and China’s gift was seen as an enormous diplomatic success.
Mrs. Obama closed her journal today by stating “I believe that this history is instructive for us today. It shows that even for nations as big, complex and different as the United States and China, small gestures can mean a great deal. They can bring people together and help them form bonds that can stretch across the globe – and in our modern world, where we can connect with someone on the other side of the world with the click of a button, we all have an opportunity to make those small gestures in our own lives”.
