He had good news for New Yorkers, Mayor Edward Koch said last week: taxes were being reduced, and the police department was being enlarged. "But the single thing people will care about," he added, "is that the pandas have come to town." How right he was. Last Thursday morning, as a gong was sounded and a comely female named Yong Yong waddled into her enclosure at the Bronx Zoo, New York City was gripped with that well-known but incurable fever: pandamania.
WELCOME TO NEW YORK, PANDAS, said a handmade sign held up by one of several dozen waiting schoolchildren. HELLO, LING LING AND YONG YONG, said another. And even more to the point: NEW YORK IS THE PANDAS! Before Ling Ling (Ringing Bell), the male half of the team, and Yong Yong (Forever and Ever) go home at the end of October -- they are on loan from the Peking Zoo for only six months -- an estimated 2 million people (2,000 an hour) will have seen and no doubt fallen in love with them. "There's something special about pandas," says Koch. "They bring people back to their childhood."
Even the meanest people, those who kick dogs, throw bottles at cats and step on robins' eggs, get teary-eyed and putty-legged when they see a panda rolling around on its ample posterior, twisting its puffy body into a seemingly impossible position, or eating an apple -- nothing more exotic than an apple! -- with its handlike paw. "I can't think of any animal that compares," says William Conway, director of the New York Zoological Society. "People love penguins, but the interest in pandas is extraordinary. There appears to be an innate response of, 'Oh, isn't it cute?' "
At the seven zoos outside China in which they have taken up permanent residence, pandas are always the top act. If the adults cause a stir, their babies cause chaos. When Tokyo's Ueno Zoo had a blessed event last year, 270,000 people suggested names for the little cub. Tong Tong (Child) was the eventual choice, and 13,000 stood in line for the first glimpse of that particular child. Another 200,000 a day called the "Dial-a-Panda" hot line to hear him squealing.
In Washington, the only U.S. city that has pandas on permanent exhibit, schoolchildren send them yearly valentines. When the female (also named Ling Ling) fell ill in 1982, she received thousands of get-well cards; some admirers tearfully called for the latest word on her condition. China lent a pair to the Los Angeles Zoo in conjunction with the 1984 Olympics; attendance more than doubled, and pandamaniacs endured three-hour waits. San Francisco's zoo, where the couple went next, saw attendance jump 50%.
But Ling Ling, Yong Yong and the other actors in what might be called China's Traveling Panda Act -- two more will be lent to the Netherlands' Beekse Bergen park this month -- are meant to do more than entertain. Pandas also carry a message: they are an endangered species with a bleak future. Only a few, 700 or so, still roam the mountains of central China, and there are not enough in zoos to ensure their survival.