What did it take for the National Zoo’s Mei Xiang to produce a panda cub? A great sperm sample and perfect timing.

Washington woke up to a happy surprise today: Mei Xiang, the National Zoo’s female giant panda, gave birth to a cub on Sunday night.

It’s that time of the year when we all sit around hoping that Mei Xiang is actually pregnant and not just pretending.

Even as plenty of the National Zoo’s other animals are efficiently producing adorable offspring, its giant pandas have generated little more than deflated hopes for another Butterstick. One philanthropist is hoping his investment will change that.

Last Monday, one of our readers made us all insanely jealous by getting the chance to visit Wolong’s Bifengxia Base in Ya’an, Sichuan and catch up with our old friend Butterstick. But we did notice was that Tai Shan had, uh, put on a couple of pounds.

In which a DCist reader visits our old friend in China.

Is it kind of insane to spend $5,000 for a trip to China in order to gather “clumps of fibrous, multicolored panda poop” produced by Tai Shan? Sure it is. But it looks like the Post’s attempt at reminding us that people still care about the big fuzzy thing that used to roam the corridors of the National Zoo’s panda habitat has brought out a small, yet very vocal minority of Washington’s panda haters.

Our beloved Butterstick was released from his 30-day quarantine at Wolong’s Bifengxia Base in Ya’an, Sichuan earlier today. Tai is reportedly getting along well with his keepers (we’re so proud!) and was allowed to roam around his new enclosure at the base for the first time. In the next six months to a year, it’s expected the D.C.-born panda will join China’s breeding program. Hopefully he has a little better luck with “competent mating” than…

Photo by RoxandaBear Our beloved Butterstick has only been in China for a few hours, and they’ve already pimped him out as a corporate spokesperson. The Washington Post reports that Sichuan Auto Industry Group, a Chinese automaker, will fork over $150,000 to “adopt” Tai Shan for life. The deal appears to outsource the cost of the giant panda’s food and care to the company, while the company gets to use Tai Shan as an…

Photo by James Di Loreto, courtesy Smithsonian Institution Butterstick, aka Tai Shan, has arrived at his new home at Wolong’s Bifengxia Base in Ya’an, Sichuan, according to a news release from the National Zoo. The panda’s 15-hour non-stop flight left Dulles at around noon on Thursday, and landed safely in Chengdu at 4:26 p.m. local time. While Tai is ostensibly in China to get busy with that country’s collection of foxy lady pandas, he…