Yeah, but could they take the Phillie Phanatic?
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BEIJING -- They’re colorful, they’re cute, they’re cuddly. And they’re everywhere in Beijing.
The five Olympic mascots, known collectively as the fuwa, grace everything from billboards and billfolds to backpacks and snackpacks. They’re on postcards and picture frames, cameras and cellphones. They even have their own 100-episode Olympic-themed cartoon series and have made cameos in a Super Mario Bros. video game.
Each of the fuwa has a two-syllable rhyming name and when you put them together -- Bei Jing Huan Ying Ni -- they say, ‘Welcome to Beijing.’
The designs for the fuwa, which translates as ‘good luck dolls’ or ‘dolls of blessing’, were created by Chinese artist Han Meilin who, according to the Wall Street Journal, originally sketched five children representing the traditional Chinese elements of fire, wood, water, gold and earth.
Then the politicians got involved.
Soon the fuwa had changed from children to animals or symbols. (Sort of.) And each had to have a specific personality and cultural inspiration, a different ideal and sport. So Han -- in a quiet act of defiance, perhaps -- gave them all oversized hats and heads to hold all that symbolism.
The blue fuwa, Beibei, for example, is female, gentle and pure in personality. She was inspired by the traditional Chinese New Year depiction of lotus and fish and represents prosperity and the aquatic sports.
Jingjing, a giant panda, is male, honest and optimistic, and represents happiness, weightlifting and judo -- though not necessarily in that order.
The red fuwa Huanhuan, inspired by the Olympic flame, is a male extrovert whose ideal is passion and who represents the ball sports.
Yingying, the yellow fuwa, is a male Tibetan antelope who is lively and vivacious and represents health and track and field.
And Nini, a female and the green mascot mistaken by some to be a kite or a locust, was actually inspired by the swallow. She is innocent and kind, represents good fortune and has a chosen sport of gymnastics.
Han, 72, suffered two heart attacks while designing the fuwa, leading some Chinese to call the characters ‘wuwa’, or witch dolls, according to the Journal.
Nini, for instance, was blamed for a train accident and a locust plague, and Yingying for Tibetan unrest, Beibei, a sturgeon, was fingered in the South China floods, Huanhuan was tied to the torch relay protests, and Jingjing, the panda, was said to have caused the massive Sichuan earthquake, which devastated an area well known for its pandas.
None of that has deterred some Chinese parents, though, since more than 9,000 of them have named their children after one of the five fuwa.
-- Kevin Baxter