Good-bye Taishan!

Taishan was a panda at the National Zoo here in Washington D.C. Actually, I should say "THE" panda at the zoo. But he was deported to China today. China doesn't care where you were born, if you're Chinese you're always Chinese.

If you can believe, this has been the top story for the past week here in Washington D.C., only eclipsed by the impending blizzard that is coming tomorrow... another 18-24 inches!

Morgan and the girls watched on live TV today as Taishan entered his crate and was loaded onto a FedEx truck. Adayla burst into tears and said "Mommy, I'm so sad. I wanted to see him again." Then Adayla asked, "Where are his Mommy and Dad?" to which Morgan answered "here in America." Adayla then cried "No! Taishan needs to stay in America with his Mommy and Dad. He's American, he doesn't want to go back to China!" and she continued to cry for another fifteen minutes... (we'll have to write about our family's crying story as we left China).

Taishan was born on July 9, 2005, and similar to all pandas he was the size of a stick of butter. A week after we moved to D.C. the first time, we went to Taishan's one-year birthday party on July 9, 2006. Adayla was all of 20 months then...
Taishan and mama back then...
We were in D.C. for a year for our Chinese language training. Our teachers required us to select Chinese names for ourselves. Chinese names, however, are unique in that there isn't a list of names. You won't find a list of the most popular Chinese baby names as Chinese first names are one or two characters that have some meaning or allude to something meaningful. Our Ayi's name, for example was "Jinmei" meaning "Golden beauty." What's a young language student to do? I went to some websites that will generate a Chinese name for you based on your name and some of your attributes that you enter, but I didn't like any of those. So I selected a name that sounded like my name "Timothy" and I named myself after the panda Taishan.

Little Taishan is the only panda successfully born and grown in captivity at this zoo, going all the way back to the original two pandas Ling Ling and Xing Xing that Chairman Mao gave to President Nixion and his wife in 1972.

Taishan is even on our magnet board:
After moving to China and introducing myself with my Chinese name, I noticed that there was some giggling sometimes after I said my name. I didn't know what it was, perhaps just a "foreigner" with a Chinese name? After we found our Chinese tutor in China, I found out what was so funny with my Chinese name. "Taishan" is not only one of the Five Sacred Daoist (Taoist) Mountains in China (which I knew when I selected the name), but "Taishan" is also...
Yes, Taishan is name used for Tarzan in Chinese!

So let's do the math:
Taishan = Tarzan
Tim = Taishan
therefore, by the theory of transitivity:
Tim = Tarzan!

I was so embarrassed. Can you imagine the weird foreign exchange student in class introducing himself... "Hello everyone, my name is Tarzan!"

So at that point I transitioned from using my Chinese name to using my "English name"... Tim, pronounced "Team" by most Chinese.

Morgan, however, continued to call me Taishan and still often calls me Taishan.

I kept seeking a new Chinese name, but I never found one. So in my second year, feeling a bit more comfortable than I was in those first few months, I went back to using my Chinese name... That's right, you heard me, my name IS Tarzan! (I mean, Taishan) Fun times...

FYI, China owns all of the pandas in the world. Each panda is "leased" at a a price of $1 million per year. So remember when Taishan turned one year old? Yup, the zoo cut China a check from a million dollars. The motherland has now decided to "recall" young Taishan back to the panda reserve in Chengdu, China.

How do you send a panda back to China? How 'bout with his personalized FedEx jet!
Yup, there is little Taishan painted on the Fedex jet dubbed the "Panda Express." This is marketing genius... 1.3 billion Chinese people will be watching on tv and reading in the newspaper about Taishan's arrival in China, and they will all see this FedEx jet. Pure marketing genius.

See here, Shanghai's biggest paper's lead story is of Taishan's deportation to China. Just wait until the plane actually arrives in China in a couple of hours...
We never made it to Chengdu during our two years in China, but we hope to some time on a future trip back to China. "Yi lu shun feng, Taishan!" Thanks for the memories...