Just back from a few days' trudging through our nation's hot, humid capital.
Visited some coworkers and the conversation turned to "the pandas."
"I wish people would leave those pandas alone," said one, plaintively.
"Yes, I saw footage of someone beating a panda on the news," said another.
I envisioned a horrible zoo scandal. Who's beating on pandas, and why? But it turned out they were talking about the panda sculptures that are gracing the city's streets (and which I, in my single-minded drive to follow casual directions like "Turn left at the Filene's Basement" overlooked). A Chinese newspaper notes that the city hopes the bears will inspire "wonderful, whimsical, analytical, critical conversation about art" but I was too confused for that kind of sophistication.
I didn't see anyone abusing pandas, but I did run into a bear or two. Here's one:
In a city not known for its surreal qualities, this was the most striking thing I saw during my visit:
The giant banners and floating faces came back to me that night as I waited fruitlessly for sleep, thinking of the iconography of Russia and Mao's China. I lay there chewing on phrases like "iconography knows no ideology" and listening to the hooting guys on the street below (maybe disappointed Orioles fans?) whose voices floated all the way up to the eighth floor.
Posted at June 18, 2004 03:01 PM