Zoo Celebrates Panda’s 25 Years in America

Ah, Hsing-Hsing. Your mate is long gone. Decades of trying failed to produce an heir. Now you are aging, a little arthritic, with eye problems and facing surgery.

So what is there for a giant panda and his adopted country to celebrate?

The faces of the children gathered across the moat at the Panda House of the National Zoo last Wednesday morning gave the answer.

“There he is,” a little girl squealed as Hsing-Hsing walked in a dignified waddle out of his private quarters to a large blueberry muffin anniversary cake waiting for him on the green hillside.

It was 25 years to the day that Hsing-Hsing and his partner, Ling-Ling, arrived in Washington, a gift from the People’s Republic of China after President Nixon’s ice-breaking trip to Beijing.

“He may be the most famous zoo resident in the United States or even in the world,” said Mac Hudson, the zoo’s deputy director, as he helped celebrate the anniversary.

Hsing-Hsing faces surgery for testicular cancer later in the month, but Hudson said the prognosis is good.

“For his age he’s in pretty good shape,” he said. “The zoo veterinarians are optimistic about his complete recovery.”

I. Michael Heyman, director of the Smithsonian Institution, of which the zoo is a part, had these thoughts:

“At first glance a giant panda would seem to be just an odd bear that eats bamboo and does not hibernate. . . . But people all over the world really adore them. . . . Maybe it’s the big black eye patches. . . . In people’s eyes, the panda becomes the cuddly bear of human folklore . . . . They are beautiful and charming and beguiling creatures.

“We care about pandas and are very concerned they may go extinct in our children’s lifetimes,” Heyman said. “They bring to us a message about endangered species and the need to protect them.”

Hsing-Hsing’s mate, Ling-Ling, died of heart failure in 1992.

None of the cubs they produced survived more than a few days.

“These were heady times and sad times for the National Zoo,” said Hudson as he recounted the story.

Zoo officials appealed for public support of a fund-raising campaign to support the 1,000 or so pandas who remain in the wild in China.

None of the speakers at the short ceremony directly appealed to China for a new panda pair to extend the zoo’s panda tradition into the 21st century.

But Hudson said: “We still hold out hope for a future generation of great pandas here at the National Zoo.”

As for Hsing-Hsing, he eventually whacked his anniversary cake in half and wolfed it down.

But first he finished off his normal daily fare: a gruel of rice, honey, cottage cheese and vitamin and mineral supplements.