The Beijing Olympics Mascots!
A while back, my best friend went to China. In a blog post, she mentioned picking up some Olympics souvenirs for the upcoming Beijing games for a friend she knew was really into the Olympic Games. Somehow, it never actually occurred to me that she was paying attention when I’d ramble on endlessly about my thesis or when I’d blow off everyone to watch the Games, because she completely surprised me when two adorable little cell phone charms arrived in my mailbox.
At the time, I was trying to make sense of these two little guys- a panda named JingJing (who ofended me because of the Chinese government’s position on the the Giant panda population) and a weird little alien with a totem on his head named NiNi. They’re both on my cell phone, and I’m prone to showing them off and bragging about my uber-cool best friend.
Well, it turns out JingJing and NiNi are two of the five rather creative critters representing the Beijing Games. What’s really cool is that when you put the five together, the syllables that form their names translate to “Welcome to Beijing”.
These little guys are incredibly full of symbolism, and they’re charming (no pun intended). Not bad for a city that had trouble landing a Games because of some of the more interesting positions of the country’s government.
It does occur to me, though…now I need to YingYing, HuanHuan, and BeiBei to complete my collection. Especially YingYing. He’s sooo cute!
It’s really going to give London (City With the Bad Logo) something to aim for.
August 17th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
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