Just over a month after Hong Kong welcomed its first baby panda twins, it has rolled out the red carpet to another pair of pandas, this time gifted from Beijing.
According to Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee, the five-year-old Sichuan-born bears are an “agile, intelligent and active” male called An An and a gentle female called Ke Ke, who excels at climbing.
They are the third panda pair to be sent over to Hong Kong by the mainland since 1999. They were received at the international airport in a high-profile ceremony attended by city officials on 26 September 2024 and intended to drive what some in the territory are hoping will become a “panda economy”.
Naming competition
Alongside the newborn panda twins, born to the world’s oldest new panda mother, 18-year-old Ying Ying and father, Le Le, the two new bears now bring Hong Kong’s panda total to six. A vast new enclosure filled with bamboo awaits them, but they will be quarantined and kept away from the public for around three months, to allow them to acclimatise to their new surroundings before being presented to park goers in December, Lee said.
In the meantime, to keep public attention focused on Hong Kong’s panda population, the city is launching a competition to find new names for An An and Ke Ke. He currently shares a name with a previous panda at the park who reached 35 years old and became the world’s oldest panda in captivity before he was euthanised in 2022. The competition invites participants to find names that reflect the new pairs’ characteristics.
An expensive but popular national emblem
As recent rafts of Chinese visa waiver agreements have sought to make it easier for tourists to visit, Hong Kong too has been looking to increase visitor numbers after Covid-19 decimated its tourism sector and GDP. In 2023, it gave away half a million plane tickets, originally purchased to support aviation amid pandemic restrictions. Now, instead of ticket giveaways, interest in the new pandas is anticipated to attract tourists, and local businesses are being urged to tap into the phenomenon.
Almost a national emblem, the panda has long been a tool the Chinese have used for international relations, with animal conservation and loan schemes giving China considerable soft power. But as some tourism stakeholders jump on the panda bandwagon, others might point out that as a tourism attraction, pandas in zoos are expensive. A Finnish zoo recently had to return to Chinese pandas early, as it could no longer afford to keep them in captivity, where they can live up to an average of 30 years old.
