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Photo by Mehgan Murphy/Smithsonian’s National Zoo
But Tai Shan's 4th birthday brings with it the bittersweet reminder that the agreement between China and the National Zoo to keep the panda in Washington is soon to expire. The Zoo negotiated a two-year lease extension for Tai Shan in 2007, but the current agreement states that he must be returned to China by the end of this year.
According to Zoo spokesperson Karin Korpowski, talks with the Chinese about Tai Shan's fate have already begun, but she cautions that it's "a slow process." The teenaged panda isn't going anywhere just yet, she said, noting that no permits have yet been obtained to move him back to his ancestral home. But is the Zoo fighting to keep Tai Shan?
"The National Zoo is committed to having giant pandas," was all Korpowski could offer. "Our goal is to always have pandas."
In other words, if you're partial to Tai Shan, you might want to start getting in your visits to see him over the next couple of months, before the clock starts to run out. You can also submit your birthday wishes to the panda online, and the Zoo's entire photo gallery of this morning's birthday celebration here. A video depicting the construction of Tai Shan's ice cake is below.
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Can't we just get the poor guy a temporary work visa and a job at Panda Cafe?
Or maybe one of you brave ladies can marry him? It'd be the blockbuster rom-com of the season, starring Ryan Reynolds as the about-to-be-deported panda-with-the-abs and Chinnifer Maniston as the reluctant mail-order wrong-side-of-forty child bride who discovers halfway through that she's pregnant with a stick of butter in her oven. Working title: Bearly Legal.
Wait. They've already done it.
How about KFP? It's finger ling ling good
That's a melamine cake. It's meant to help acclimate her to the diet she will have in China.
OK so we get something Made in China and in less than a few years we have to return it. Made in China indeed!
If those communist bastards think for one second that Tai Shan will ever set foot outside of the United States of America, then HU Jintao better start practicing drinking his Kung Pao Chicken through a straw, yo!
F'KIN 'A, man! I'm supposed to cry because this illegal immigrant put some hardworking American panda plushie out of a job? We need to look after our own perverts here in the You-knighted States! Now we know where our crypto-Muslim Kenyan antichrist president stands on the issues of illegal marsupial immigration and B&W plushie pervert wage parity! No more bailouts for commie pandas and their hysterical pregnancies! You haven't heard the last of the teabaggers on this issue! And where the hell is his birth certificate?
We need more Americans like Tai Shan!! He's cuter than all get out, he's well behaved, he's interracial, he's got mom and dad living next door, he doesn't stay out late, he's playful, he's famous and most importantly he wants me to have his baby.
You meant to say that, most importantly, he's a "teenager in 'bear years'"!!!
Exactly.
He'll also rip your face off.
I guess they will wait until Marion Barry either has sex with Butterstick or gets a BJ. Hasn't he has sex with everyone in town?
Speaking personally, thankfully, no he has not.
I am so over Butterstick. Ok, not really. Not really at all. It's just that godamn China is going to jack our perfect bear, and I'm striving for some emotional distance.
Damn, I love that bear. NOT like in a MJ creepy I want to pet it and then give it lots of money to shush his pretty mouth, so stop thinking that.
Couldn't we sacrifice some Uighurs or something in trade? Hell, if some single moonbat can poach and hide a Vizsla in broad daylight, then surely as a city we can figure out a plan to nab and squirrel away Butterstick all to ourselves.
I think you should recruit and begin training the B.E.A.O.T.C.H.
Butterstick
Extraction
And
Operations
Team of
China
Haters
At least it's not a North Korean panda.
At least it's not a North Korean panda.
If they make a movie, I think it should be a parody of "Grizzly Man" and Dane Cook should be the crazy blond guy who gets eaten at the end. Tai Shan is cast as the bear who eats him of course.
Maybe a dumb question, but is Tai Shan, the Chinatown cheap eat on H St., named after him? (I'm guessing no, since the interior is at least 3 times older than he is.)
Maybe a dumb question, but is Tai Shan, the Chinatown cheap eat on H St., named after him? (I'm guessing no, since the interior is at least 3 times older than he is.)
The name Tai Shan was chosen by the zoo's voting contest, and means "Peaceful Mountain" in Chinese.