DC -- FONZ Event -- Pandas: Tai Shan naming announcement:
Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.
Description of Pictures: From the 10/18/2005 Washington Post article by Karilyn Barker describing this event:
Panda Cub's Birthday Present: A Name
'Tai Shan,' Winning Choice of Online Voters, A Symbolic Nod to U.S.-China Friendship
The National Zoo's giant panda cub was officially dubbed Tai Shan yesterday and heralded as a symbol -- a very cute symbol -- of friendship between the United States and China.
Tai Shan, pronounced tie shahn and meaning "peaceful mountain," was the favorite in the zoo's online poll offering five choices approved by the China Wildlife Conservation Association. One of three names suggested by the Panda House staff, it garnered about 44 percent of more than 202,000 votes cast. ...
The zoo's new director, John Berry, called for a drumroll and revealed the choice at a ceremony outside the Panda House that also celebrated the cub's landmark 100th day. The event featured costumed dancers and a delegation of Smithsonian Institution and Chinese officials.
"For 14 weeks, millions of people have delighted in watching him," Berry said, referring to a worldwide legion of fans that has monitored the cub on the zoo's 24-hour Web camera since his birth July 9....
"Giant pandas are a valuable resource in China and also a great gift of China to the world and the United States," Yan Xun, deputy director of China's Conservation Department, said through a translator. [Translations were provided at the last moment by Robyn S. Kravit, President of the Board of Directors of Friends of the National Zoo (FONZ).]
Panda diplomacy was launched at the National Zoo more than 30 years ago. The zoo's first two pandas, Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, were a gift from the Chinese government in 1972, when China and the United States were trying to improve relations.
Zheng Zeguang, deputy chief of mission at the Chinese Embassy, noted that those pandas entertained the American people and others for two decades. Speaking in English, he declared that the current pair, Tian Tian (t ...More...
Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific people (or other things) in the pictures which I haven't labeled, please identify them for the world. Or fill in any other descriptions you can. Click the little pencil icon underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.
Slide Show: Want to see the pictures as a slide show?
[Slideshow]
Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]
Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
FONZCE_051017_034.JPG: The people with the interesting leggings would end up as feet for the dragon who'll be seen later.
FONZCE_051017_062.JPG: The press was in full-bloom for this event
FONZCE_051017_072.JPG: Lisa Stevens (National Zoo Assistant Curator for Primates and Pandas) with Zheng Zeguang, deputy chief of mission of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China. There was a lot of squinting this day because the sun was bright and at a sharp angle.
FONZCE_051017_124.JPG: Yan Xun, deputy director of China's Conservation Department, with John Berry, director of the Zoo.
FONZCE_051017_133.JPG: The guy with glasses is Zheng Zeguang, deputy chief of mission of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China. The other guy is Yan Xun, deputy director of China's Conservation Department.
FONZCE_051017_152.JPG: John Berry, director of the Zoo
FONZCE_051017_174.JPG: Susan Hughes, on the left, is a volunteer panda watcher who witnessed the birth.
Ed Bronikowski, associate curator, is in the blue shirt between Susan and Lisa Stevens.
FONZCE_051017_198.JPG: Robyn Kravit, the new President of the Board of Directors for FONZ, speaks Chinese and was called on from the audience to come up and do translations for the Chinese official because the interpreter was later.
FONZCE_051017_322.JPG: Left to right: No idea, Yan Xun (deputy director of China's Conservation Department), and Zhang Shanning (also with the Conservation Department).
FONZCE_051017_339.JPG: Dale Evans, Smithsonian Undersecretary for Science
FONZCE_051017_378.JPG: Rod Sallee, a U.S. Forest Service employee from Harpers Ferry, WV whose name was chosen at random from among the panda name voters to be among the first outsiders to see the cub.
Limiting Text: You can turn off all of this text by clicking this link:
[Thumbnails Only]
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (DC -- FONZ Event -- ) directly related to this one:
[Display ALL photos on one page]:
Generally-Related Pages: Other pages with content (DC -- Natl Zoological Park -- Giant Pandas) somewhat related to this one:
[Display ALL photos on one page]:
2022_DC_SINZ_Panda: DC -- Natl Zoological Park -- Giant Pandas (65 photos from 2022)
2021_DC_SINZ_Panda: DC -- Natl Zoological Park -- Giant Pandas (44 photos from 2021)
2020_DC_SINZ_Panda: DC -- Natl Zoological Park -- Giant Pandas (11 photos from 2020)
2012_DC_SINZ_Panda: DC -- Natl Zoological Park -- Giant Pandas (5 photos from 2012)
2015_DC_SINZ_Panda: DC -- Natl Zoological Park -- Giant Pandas (13 photos from 2015)
2014_DC_SINZ_Panda: DC -- Natl Zoological Park -- Giant Pandas (41 photos from 2014)
2013_DC_SINZ_Panda: DC -- Natl Zoological Park -- Giant Pandas (14 photos from 2013)
2010_DC_SINZ_Panda: DC -- Natl Zoological Park -- Giant Pandas (126 photos from 2010)
2000_DC_SINZ_Panda: DC -- Natl Zoological Park -- Giant Pandas (1 photo from 2000)
2008_DC_SINZ_Panda: DC -- Natl Zoological Park -- Giant Pandas (6 photos from 2008)
2005 photos: Equipment this year: I used four cameras -- two Fujifilm S7000 cameras (which were plagued by dust inside the lens), a new Fujifilm S5200 (nice but not great and I hated the proprietary xD memory chips), and a Canon PowerShot S1 IS (returned because it felt flimsy to me). I gave my Epson camera to my catsitter. Both of the S7000s were in for repairs over Christmas.
Trips this year: Florida (for Lotusphere), a driving trip down south (seeing sites in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia), Williamsburg, and Chicago.
Number of photos taken this year: 147,000.