The Significance of Inter-Cultural Communication of “Panda Fever”— A Case Study of “Meng Meng” and “Jiao Qing” in Berlin

Peng Dawei＊

China News Service

Abstract: From the perspective of inter-cultural communication, this paper analyzed the framework and content of dozens of reports written by five mainstream media organizations in Germany on the arrival of two Chinese giant pandas, their daily activities, and giving birth from 2017 to 2020. The results show that the mainstream media reports in Germany on the birth of twin cubs of the Sichuan giant pandas before and after their arrival in Germany were predominantly based on a cultural framework. In addition,these reports had positive or neutral tones. This shows that the giant panda international scientific research cooperation between China and foreign countries also has great significance in inter-cultural communication and people-to-people exchanges.

Keywords: inter-cultural communication, panda, Chinese foreign affairs

Introduction

China and Germany have a long history of exchanges. From missionaries such as Johann Adam Schall von Bell and Richard Wilhelm in the Ming and the Qing dynasties and Richard Wilhelm in the Qing dynasty who came to China promoting exchanges of science, technology and culture between China and the West, to the advocates of China’s New Culture Movement such as Cai Yuanpei, and the revolutionary pioneers of the Communist Party of China, Zhou Enlai and Zhu De,both countries have maintained close exchanges for a long time.

By 2020, China had been Germany’s largest trading partner in the world for five consecutive years, and Germany has also long been China’s most important trading partner in the EU (German Federal Statistical Office, 2021, July 19).

Wu Ken, the Chinese ambassador to Germany, once pointed out that it was critical for Sino-German cooperation to enhance mutual understanding, reduce misunderstandings and finally achieve mutual trust through frank exchanges. Then, how to achieve this goal has become a challenge and an important topic faced by people from all walks of life in both countries.

In 2017, a pair of Chinese Sichuan giant pandas “Meng Meng” and “Jiao Qing” were loaned to Germany, which set off a “giant panda fever” in Germany.

From the perspective of inter-cultural communication, this paper will analyze German mainstream media’s report on the pair of giant pandas from Sichuan, China coming to Germany,relocating and giving birth in Germany in the time between 2017 and 2020, and then analyze the German mainstream public opinion’s attitude on the protection of giant pandas jointly carried out by China and Germany, the reception of the giant panda cooperation between China and Germany, as well as the interaction between giant pandas and local society in the sense of cultural symbols.

Literature Review

By searching “panda inter-cultural communication” and “panda news report” as the keywords in Google Scholar, a total of 11 academic articles directly related to this topic were found, while many other papers are mainly from the perspectives of giant panda breeding and protection, nature reserve research, etc.

The overwhelming majority of the above papers interpreted international panda exchange and cooperation from the perspective of ecology, politics (including international relations and diplomacy),and journalism. Among them, the most frequently cited (102 times) was Progress in the ecology and conservation of giant pandas by Wei Fuwen (2015) et al. This article analyzed why Giant panda conservation was a possible success story and argued that if the extinction of this iconic endangered species can be avoided, the species will become a showcase program for the Chinese government and its collaborators. It also mentioned major advancements in ecological science for the giant panda, examining how these advancements have contributed to panda conservation. In the sense of comparative study between China and foreign countries, this article revealed a rather enlightening theme, i.e., how China managed to balance the relationship between conservation and development in its biodiversity governance. The city of Kunming in south-western China is about to host the Fifteenth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity(COP 15), a synchronic and diachronic comparison of the mechanisms, practices, history, and culture of biodiversity conservation in China and the rest of the world. It could shed light on an approach to promoting global governance through inter-cultural dialogue.

In China, 44 papers can be obtained by searching the keywords “inter-cultural communication”and “panda” on China’s National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), of which the most influential was Research on Inter-Cultural Communication of Animation Films-Taking the “Kung Fu Panda”Series as an Example by Li Niannian (1589 downloads, 16 citations, master thesis of Jinan University,2017). This article mainly takes the animated film “Kung Fu Panda” series as an example, uses the inter-cultural “layered interpretation mode” and “secondary decoding mode” to interpret the film in an inter-cultural communication context, and analyzes how the “Kung Fu Panda” series integrated“Chinese elements” into the mainstream Western values, drawing some enlightenment for the intercultural communication strategy for Chinese animation films. Another influential paper is A Study on the Inter-cultural Communication Strategy of “Kung Fu Panda” Trilogy by Song Linjing (647 downloads, eight citations, 2016), which analyzes the inter-cultural communication strategies of American films entering the Chinese market. It makes suggestions for enhancing the international competitiveness of Chinese movies and the attractiveness of Chinese culture.

Cultural Symbol and Inter-Cultural Communication

Semiotics is the study of sign, signification, symbol, and communication. It covers all signs,omens, emblems, and characters, including signal symbols, ciphers, ancient civilization signs, sign language, etc. (Ball & Rabern).

Semiotic theorists defined cultural symbols as media that can carry cultural meanings. It has the information and meaning of culture, is the carrier of cultural creation and inheritance, and includes linguistic and non-verbal signs (Meng, 2007).

Inter-cultural communication is a discipline that studies communication across different cultures and social groups, or how culture affects communication. It describes the wide range of communication processes and problems that naturally appear within an organization or social context of individuals from different religious, social, ethnic, and educational backgrounds. In this sense, it seeks to understand how people from other countries and cultures act, communicate, and perceive the world around them (Lauring, 2011).

Ju Yan’an, a scholar then at Fudan University who was one of the first scholars to introduce this concept in China, believes that inter-cultural communication refers to the communication between cultures or subcultures of different ethnic groups, regions, and social communities. And the general principles of cultural studies are to study the questions of horizontal cultural dissemination, and its main content is “analysis of the horizontal and vertical dissemination of culture” (Lu, 2021).

There is a historical process of the reception of Chinese cultural symbols in Germany. Centuries ago,China and Germany already encountered each other. The first German to come to China was Bruder Arnold, a Catholic Franciscan priest who arrived in Dayidu from Cologne, Germany in 1303 (Wu, 2011,p. 64). The cognition of China in Germany has experienced a development process from acceptance to praise to criticism, which was in line with the coexistence theory of “adaptation” and “reactive adaptation”in cross-cultural communications. In general, the acceptance (learning) of Chinese culture from Prussian King Wilhelm I (1797-1888) can be regarded as the origin of China’s image in Germany. During this period, as a concentrated embodiment of Oriental customs, Chinese art was deeply loved and respected in Germany. During the Enlightenment period, the German Enlightenment thinkers represented by Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz adopted a praising attitude towards China, which contained a cultural demand for change “For My Use.” The aim was to create a new humanistic culture different from the medieval church culture. European thinkers began to learn from Chinese traditional practical philosophy and morality and ethics. With the completion of the Enlightenment, important German thinkers in early modern to modern times, such as Kant, Lichtenberg, Hurd, Goethe, and Hegel, criticized Chinese culture from the rationalism perspective. “Criticism” in the context of German classical philosophy, such as the meaning used by Kant in his three criticisms, refers to something “about the general rational ability to pursue all knowledge independent of all experience” (Li, 1984).

The image of “dragon” (Chinese: 龙 loong) has long been used by the West to picture China.However, due to the language differences formed by historical and cultural factors, “dragon” is a word with different connotations in the West and the East. Fundamentally, the “龙” in Chinese culture is not the same as the “dragon” in the Western sense, and these two concepts have widely divergent connotations and extensions. To this end, some scholars proposed better translation strategies.Translation studies and semantics are not the focus of this study. Hence, this study will not go into details regarding these two disciplines. Instead, this study continued to explore the significance of the image of “giant panda” in the construction of China’s national image in the following sections.

“Giant panda” has been deemed as a charming, gentle, and lovely image. In international communications, the animal image of a panda conveys the message of “peace” and “friendship.” A“panda symbol” represents the value idea of China’s peaceful rise. At the same time, the black and white color of the pandas can remind people of China’s “Tai Chi” symbol, which contains China’s“harmony” (Chinese: 和 he ) thought and profound cultural character. This symbolic feature plays a positive role in constructing the national image and eliminating stereotypes.

International Giant Panda Cooperation: A Brief Introduction

The giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is a species under the national level I protection in China. It is a species in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). It is known as China’s “national treasure” and is one of the most important species in wildlife protection. It is loved by people worldwide and has become an important symbolic species for China’s ecological civilization and the construction of “Beautiful China.” It plays a unique role in promoting people-to-people exchanges and inter-cultural communication. For a long time, many countries have proposed to China their wishes to obtain giant pandas. Since 1994,the Chinese government has initiated medium- and long-term international cooperative research projects on the protection of giant pandas in accordance with the spirit of the CITES Convention.As of the end of 2017, China had carried out international cooperative research on giant pandas with 20 zoos in 15 countries, including Japan, the United States, Austria, Thailand, Spain, Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Singapore, Canada, Belgium, Malaysia, South Korea, the Netherlands, and Germany. There are altogether 54 giant pandas and their cubs living overseas.

Over the years, the giant panda international cooperation has made unique and effective contributions. On the one hand, it has met the desire of the foreign public to see giant pandas, built a bridge of friendly communication between Chinese people and the foreign people, improved the image of giant pandas and other wildlife protection work. On the other hand, it has carried out a considerable scale of scientific research on giant pandas with zoos overseas, solved some technical problems in giant panda diseases, breeding, and field protection, published a large number of research papers, and spread the knowledge on giant pandas as well as its scientific research and protection.In a word, the international giant panda cooperation in the past years has improved the international capacity to protect this particularly endangered species (Zhang, Zhong & Zhu, 2017).

“Meng Meng” and “Jiao Qing” are not the first pair of Chinese giant pandas to live in Germany.In 1980, China presented a pair of Sichuan giant pandas, “Bao Bao” (male) and “Tian Tian” (female)as a national gift to the Federal Republic of Germany.①Bundesrepublik Deutschland, i.e., West Germany. Germany was divided into West Germany and Democratic Germany (East Germany) after World War II.The two were formally unified in October 1990. The unification was completed in the form of the integration of six East German states (Berlin, Brandenburg,Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Thuringia, Saxony, and Saxony Anhalt) into the Federal Republic of Germany. Therefore, after reunification, Germany is still known as the “Bundesrepublik Deutschland.” Retrieved from https://www.deutschland.de/de/topic/politik/deutschland-europa/mauerfall-und-deutsche-einheit.For more than 30 years, “Bao Bao” had been the key highlight of the Zoo Berlin.

However, this pair of giant pandas had an ill-fated relationship. Tian Tian died prematurely in 1984, shortly after she arrived in Germany. In order to find a suitable partner for “Bao Bao,” the Zoo Berlin worked hard indeed and spared no effort in sending “Bao Bao” to the London Zoo in the UK for a blind date with the female panda “Ming Ming,” but the attempt turned out in vain (Chinese Consulate General in Frankfurt, 2012, August 22).

In 1995, Germany welcomed “Yan Yan,” a female giant panda five years younger than “Bao Bao,” from China at the price of US $60,000 a year, hoping that they could have baby pandas. In order to help “Yan Yan” conceive, the zoo tried artificial insemination for eight consecutive years, but all attempts failed. In 2007, “Yan Yan” died of acute intestinal. On August 22, 2012, “Bao Bao” died alone in the Zoo Berlin, as the oldest male captive giant panda in the world. He was 34.①“ ‘Bao Bao’ ist tot,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, https://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/panda-im-berliner-zoo-bao-bao-ist-tot-1.1447137

On April 28, 2017, the Zoo Berlin officially announced that China and Germany had signed a relevant agreement, and the park would welcome a pair of giant pandas from the Chengdu Giant Research Base of Panda Breeding, China. Shi Mingde, the then Chinese ambassador to Germany,said that China and Germany had worked for many years and this agreement was a manifestation of the friendship between China and Germany, indicating an unusually close relationship between the two countries (Peng, 2017, April 29).

On the afternoon of June 24, 2017, the two Chinese Sichuan giant pandas, “Meng Meng” and“Jiao Qing,” successfully arrived in Berlin, Germany by Lufthansa air charter after a 12-hour flight.To welcome the new giant pandas, after having no pandas for five years, the German side made an exception and used the terminal building of the New Berlin Airport that had not been officially opened and held a grand welcoming ceremony at the airport. “Meng Meng,” a 4-year-old female giant panda, and “Jiao Qing,” a 7-year-old male giant panda, both came from the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Base, China. According to the Cooperation Agreement on Giant Panda Conservation and Research signed between the Zoo Berlin in Germany and the China Wildlife Conservation Association (CWCA) in April 2017, this pair of giant pandas will live in their new home in Germany for 15 years, continuing the international cooperation in giant panda research and protection between China and Germany which began in the 1980s (Peng, 2017, June 25). 2017 coincided with the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Germany. Therefore, the arrival of the giant pandas in Germany was also regarded as a gift to this anniversary.

On July 5, 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping was in Germany visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel and attending the opening ceremony of the Giant Panda Garden of the Zoo Berlin. At the ceremony, “Meng Meng” and “Jiao Qing” officially met with the public. The two cute Chinese national treasures aroused cheers from the waiting crowd.

At about 6 p.m. local time on August 31, 2019, “Meng Meng” successfully gave birth to her first giant panda cub after 147 days of pregnancy. Later, at about 7 p.m. that night, the second cub was also born smoothly. This was the first time that a giant panda cub had been born in Germany, and the event became breaking news. On December 9 of the same year, when the newborn giant panda twins in Germany reached 100 days, the Zoo Berlin announced that “Meng Xiang” and “Meng Yuan” were the names of the first pair of giant pandas born in Germany. The zoo also announced the gender of the newborn giant pandas—“Meng Xiang” and “Meng Yuan” were twin brothers.②Pacda Garden, Zoo Berlin, https://www.zoo-berlin.de/de/tiere-sub/panda-garden

The family of four giant pandas in Berlin has become a superstar not only in Germany, but also in Europe and around the world. The 2017 “Giant Panda Global Awards,” sponsored by the global giant panda website, voting by more than 300,000 giant panda fans from 127 countries and regions around the world, picked “Meng Meng” to be the winner of the gold award of “Favorite Panda outside China.” At the end of 2019, the giant panda twins “Meng Xiang” and “Meng Yuan” who had just celebrated their 100-day birthday, were shortlisted for the “Panda Cub of the Year” for the “Global Giant Panda Award” in 2019.①The Giant Panda Global Awards was set by Jeroen Jacobs, who created the GiantPandaGlobal.com. in 2012. The awards aim to promote the protection and research of giant pandas in China and other countries. The Giant Panda Global Awards include “Panda Cub of the Year,” “Favorite Panda in China,”“Favorite Returned Panda,” “Favorite Panda Outside China.” Each award is divided into gold, silver, and bronze awards. Details can be found on https://www.giantpandaglobal.com/giant-panda-global-awards/

On top of diplomatic relations, people-to-people and cultural exchanges, and tourism exchanges,the unique significance of the cooperation between China and Germany regarding giant pandas is more reflected in biodiversity protection. In 2017, China and Germany signed the Cooperation Agreement on Giant Panda Conservation and Research between the Zoo Berlin in Germany and the China Wildlife Conservation Association (CWCA), creating a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)on Jointly Promoting Cooperation in Giant Panda Protection. The MOU was jointly signed by Zhang Jianlong, director of the State Forestry Administration of China, and Michael Müller, mayor of Berlin,Germany, in the presence of leaders from the two countries. The MOU aims to promote the smooth implementation of the Sino-German cooperation project on Giant Panda Protection and Research and boost exchanges and cooperation between China and Germany in wildlife protection, including giant pandas.

The giant panda is one of the rarest, most endangered, and extremely slow breeding rate species in the world. In recent years, thanks to the joint efforts of China and the international community,the breeding technology developed to assist giant pandas has been continuously improved, and the number of giant pandas has increased significantly. The giant panda twins born in Berlin are the first cubs successfully born in Germany by giant pandas obtained from China, witnessing the successful joint efforts of the scientific research teams from China and Germany.

Analysis of the German Media’s Reporting on “Meng Meng” and “Jiao Qing”

The purpose of this research is to analyze whether the international cooperation between China and foreign countries on the breeding and protection of giant pandas has had any impact on intercultural communication in addition to its scientific research significance. If so, then this research will continue to quantify and qualify this impact.

The content reported by foreign mainstream media is selected as the object of inter-cultural communication research, covered in the relevant study of predecessors. For example, when Wang Xin et al. pointed out that the documentary “Du Fu” launched by the BBC not only provides a perspective of how the Western media constructionism mechanism is formed, but also a “calling structure” that heterogeneous culture has also been developed through communication. The “documentary” and“non-fiction” characteristics of documentary films make it more widely accepted and more powerful in international communication and inter-cultural communication than fictional films and news programs (Wang, 2021). Hence, this paper used framework and content analysis methods to study the reporting on Chinese giant pandas by the German media.

Some scholars believe that “framework” construction is a means to help us understand and interpret the world around us. As the first scholar to adopt the concept of “framework,” Irving Goffman (1974, p. 21) put forward in his works, “We all actively classify, organize and interprets our life experiences to make sense of them.” This statement is still of great significance today. Although it is convenient to travel abroad nowadays, for most people, it is still a rare opportunity to learn more about another country directly and deeply by studying, working, or traveling abroad. Hence, people tend to rely on domestic mass media to obtain information about foreign countries.

In 1986, Goffman (1974, p. 21) defined “framing” as the “schemata of interpretation that allows individuals or groups to locate, perceive, identify, and label events and occurrences.” Similarly, Robert M. Entman (1993) described that “to frame was to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition,causal interpretation, moral evaluation or treatment recommendation for the item described.”

The above definitions show that framing includes the function of moral judgment and promoting the improvement/worsening of impressions. Pan Zhongdang and G. M. Kosicki (1993) defined the framing of news reports as “a cognitive tool for information coding, interpretation and reconstruction,which is communicable and connected with the daily norms of news professionalism.” This definition emphasizes the fact that the news reporting framework can affect not only “what” people think but also “how” people think to some extent.

Some scholars believe that when media content producers frame news, selection, and reorganization are the two most critical strategies, respectively. No matter which strategy is applied,media content producers always need to use the existing symbols and ideographic elements to construct the framework of news. In this sense, it can be believed that these symbols and ideographic elements are the constituent elements of the news framework, including metaphors, examples,slogans, narration, visual images, and other symbols. Meanwhile, there are also ideographic elements such as syntactic structure, plot structure, theme structure and rhetorical structure (Gamson& Modigliani, 1989; Pan & Kosicki, 1993).①Quoted from Framework Analysis: A Theoretical Concept to Be Clarified by Chen Yang (2007).

Content analysis is a “research method used to objectively and quantitatively describe the communication’s content.” Within the framework research, the content research mainly focuses on “framing devices” (Zaharopoulos, 2007), such as news headlines, introductions, and closing paragraphs.

This method was chosen because the texts of the various reports, as the main device of the report framework, “can make bits of information more salient by placement or repetition, or by associating them with culturally familiar symbols” (Entman, 1993). The content analysis based on the linguistic approach can ensure that this study is based on systematic, complete, and thorough media text analysis and draws reliable framework research conclusions.

In this paper, a total of 32 news stories about the giant pandas in Berlin from January 1, 2017 to December 31, 2020 were randomly selected from five media sources, including the “Tagesschau.de” website of German TV ARD, the three national newspapers (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Welt) and the mainstream and serious weekly news Der Spiegel. The content analysis was conducted by the path of framework analysis.

Based on the above, this paper predominantly studied the following three aspects: (a) the framework adopted by the five media in describing the giant pandas in Berlin; (b) the most often used words in describing giant pandas in reports and comments; (c) the positive/negative/neutral attitudes presented by the reports.

After careful selection, this study drew upon two frameworks used in Peng Zengjun (2012, pp.143-147) for deductive research: the political framework and the cultural framework. It should be noted that “the political framework” in this paper refers to the reporting framework reflecting the German government’s political agenda regarding Chinese policies as reported in the German media.This paper analyzed how the German media indirectly shaped the image of China in the process of reporting the events of the giant pandas coming to Germany. The cultural framework refers to all cultural exchanges between China and Germany related to giant pandas, and such reports were included in this framework.

The analysis results show that 20 reports used the cultural framework among the selected report samples, while 12 reports adopted the political framework, accounting for 62.5 percent and 37.5 percent, respectively (Figure 1). This indicates that the reports of the mainstream German media on the birth of the twin cubs of Sichuan Giant Pandas before and after their arrival in Germany were predominantly based on the cultural framework instead of the political framework.

Figure 1. Analysis of the framework of reports on giant pandas by German media

Figure 2. The emotion of reports on giant pandas by the German media

With respect to the overall emotion of the report, 22 articles were positive, accounting for 68.75 percent. Seven and three articles were neutral or negative, accounting for 21.875 percent and 9.375 percent, respectively (Figure 2). This shows that the tone of the reports by the German media on the giant panda family in Berlin was predominantly positive or neutral.

The following table (Table 1) lists the ten hot words with the highest word frequency in the reports:

Table 1 Hot words with the highest word frequency in German media

The “Panda Fever” in Germany

In this chapter, this paper will focus on how all sectors of Germany and even Europe (federal government, Berlin municipal government, Berlin Zoo, business community, and civil society)actively engaged in the creation of this “Panda Fever” after the introduction of giant pandas to Germany, and try to discover its significance in inter-cultural communication.

German Governments at All Levels

German Chancellor Angela Merkel attached great importance to the giant pandas’ arrival in Germany. She not only personally promoted this cooperation during her visit to China in 2015,and attended the opening ceremony of the Panda Garden at the Zoo Berlin along with the Chinese President Xi Jinping in July 2017, becoming the highest-level fan of giant pandas in Germany. On top of that, the German federal government and the Berlin City and state government①Germany has 16 federal states, of which Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen are three “city-states” that is, as a state-level administrative unit. Its executive head is called “Mayor.” These three “city-states” are at the same level as the other 13 states. This administrative level is similar to that of China’s municipalities directly under the central government. For ease of expression, it is hereinafter uniformly referred to as "Berlin City.”actively utilized the opportunity of the giant pandas’ arrival in Germany to publicize this latest popular tourist landscape in Berlin.

On the opening day of the Panda Garden, Steffen Seibert, the spokesperson for the German Chancellor and head of the Press-and-Information Office, posted two videos of Chinese and German leaders unveiling the Panda Garden on his official Twitter account (@ RegSprecher), quoting Merkel’s original words that described the Sichuan giant pandas as “two very likable diplomats.” These two tweets received hundreds of likes, comments, and retweets.

The German federal government also posted videos and articles about the giant pandas coming to Germany on its Facebook account, which received nearly 2,000 likes and 600 comments. Netizens from all over Germany sent their blessings and commented that “They are so cute” and “There’s another reason to travel to Berlin.”

As the main beneficiary of the “giant panda economy,” Berlin has used the giant pandas for city image marketing since they arrived in Berlin. According to statistics from January 1, 2017, to December 31, 2020, Governing Mayor of Berlin, Michael Müller posted a total of 47 articles about the giant pandas in Berlin on his official Twitter and social media accounts. Among them, 45 tweets were posted on Twitter alone, indicating that, on average, the Mayor of Germany’s capital posted a tweet about Chinese giant pandas every five days, and the “#Pandas” created by Michael Müller also became a hot topic. These tweets covered Michael Müller’s joy of going to Berlin Airport to welcome the arrival of giant pandas “Meng Meng” and “Jiao Qing,” exclusive disclosure of the pregnancy of “Meng Meng” and her ultrasonic pictures. Michael Müller’s tweets also included many interactions with China, such as attending the beam raising ceremony of the Panda Garden and the naming ceremony of the twin cubs with the Chinese delegation and the Chinese ambassador. Also,Michael Müller did not forget to use the pandas to help market the Royal Porcelain Factory in Berlin(Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur, KPM, Berlin). He posted a photo of himself and the person in charge of KPM, who gave him a porcelain panda produced by KPM. In his speech celebrating the 175th anniversary of the establishment of the Zoo Berlin, the oldest zoo in Germany, Michael Müller also highlighted the giant pandas from Sichuan, China.

Zoo Berlin and Relevant Enterprises

As the main undertaking part of Sino-Germany cooperation through giant pandas in Germany,the Zoo Berlin invested unprecedented human, material, and energy to welcome the arrival of “Meng Meng” and “Jiao Qing.” As a cultural power and cultural industry power, Germany has also made great efforts in how to make good use of the “gold medal intellectual property” (important images) of the giant pandas and give full play to its adding value to cultural tourism.

Figure 3: The eye-catching photo of giant pandas on the front page of the official website of Zoo Berlin

Taking the Zoo Berlin as an example, after the official opening of the Panda Garden in July 2017, the zoo replaced all the posters on its exterior wall with giant panda posters. In addition, the flags lining both sides of the sidewalk along the street were also replaced with giant panda themes.Also, the zoo invested a lot of money in redesigning its visual identity, including its official website,tickets, tour manuals, etc. Nowadays, people can see the lovely giant panda images when they log on to the official website of Zoo Berlin, and all web pages are set with the giant panda pattern as the background. When visitors walk in the zoo, they can see giant panda cartoons everywhere. The Gift Shop at the exit of the zoo has become a “Giant Panda Image Shop,” filled with all kinds of giant panda products and books.

According to the official data released by Zoo Berlin, the number of visitors in 2019 reached a record high of nearly 5.5 million before COVID-19, an increase of approximately 400 thousand visitors compared with the previous year. The zoo underlined that the giant pandas played an important role in the increase of visitors.①Millionen Besucher: Rekord für Zoo und Tierpark, Süddeutsche Zeitung, https://www.sueddeutsche.de/leben/tiere-berlin-5-5-millionen-besucher-rekord-fuerzoo-und-tierpark-dpa.urn-newsml-dpa-com-20090101-200224-99-52825

Local enterprises also sniffed out business opportunities from the “giant panda fever.” Because of the pandemic, the food delivery business in Berlin has seen explosive development. A newly established local delivery company named “Foodpanda” chose the lovely image of a panda as its logo,and its posters were placed all over Berlin, quickly becoming a popular scene in Berlin.

The Giant Panda Phenomenon and the Reception of Chinese Culture in Germany

At this point, a question that should be answered is, to what extent the giant panda is seen as a kind of interaction between China and Germany in the sense of inter-cultural communication as a cultural symbol in Germany, which has been “incorporated” by different actors in different forms and how the giant panda helps to promote the communicational activities.

The corpus collection of the University of Leipzig in Germany contained a total of 35,021,957 sentences used in the German media as of 2020. By inputting “Riesenpanda” (the German word of giant panda) into this corpus, it can be seen that “China” was among the four words most closely related to the word “Riesenpanda” (the other three words are “Junges” [boys], “zur” [to] and “Welt”[world]),①reflecting that in the public opinion of German-speaking countries (Germany, Switzerland,and Austria), the word “Riesenpanda” has shown an inseparable associative relationship with “China”in the sense of “signified” and “signifier” proposed by the linguist Saussure.

Encoding/Decoding Model and the Inter-Cultural Communication of the Giant Panda

In the sense of the late cultural theorist Stuart Hall’s encoding and decoding model of communication, encoding means that the encoder transforms information into a message, in which the symbol is as its unique form of existence. In Hall’s theory, a TV symbol is a complex symbol,which itself is composed of two types: visual symbol and auditory symbol.

Visual symbols include television, newspapers, magazines, online media, and other media outlets’ use of visually impactful close-up photos and footages of giant pandas, highlighted by words such as “fleece,” “round,” and “cute things,” which makes the audience feel that the giant panda,as a mammal that is extremely rare in the European continent, has many” “cute” characteristics. In addition, the new giant panda pavilion at the Zoo Berlin, which cost about 10 million euros, also uses a large number of Chinese cultural symbols in its exterior and interior decoration: from the Biane“Panda Pavilion” written in Chinese characters to the red exterior walls and interiors, and the carved beams and paintings imitating the traditional Chinese architectural style. The Zoo Berlin once used such sentence in its commercial: “The Giant Panda Pavilion at the Zoo Berlin is a piece of China at the heart of Berlin.”

To sum up, the Zoo Berlin and the German media used many intuitive and vivid Chinese visual symbols when promoting and reporting the pandas coming to Germany, which shortened the psychological distance with the German audience and provided better inter-cultural communication effects.

When it comes to an auditory symbol, this concept mainly refers to the names “Mengmeng,”“Jiaoqing,” “Dream,” and “Mengyuan” of the family of four giant pandas, which were mentioned by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Berin Governing Mayor Müller on many occasions. Ordinary citizens and tourists also have a great interest in learning the pronunciation of these Chinese names.

Due to time and funding constraints, this paper has not conducted a questionnaire survey among ordinary German citizens to quantitively and qualitatively analyze the information about giant pandas received by the audience in this process. However, judging from the more than 30 German media reports selected in this paper, most of the German netizens’ messages in the comment area showed positive characteristics, which should also give a hint on the effects of giant panda international cooperation in inter-cultural communication.

Conclusion

The purpose of this research is to assess the significance of inter-cultural communication of the“(Giant) Panda Fever” based on the case study of the “Meng Meng” and “Jiao Qing” family of giant pandas living in Germany. To sum up, this article found that as "Meng Meng" and "Jiao Qing" moved from Sichuan to Berlin, various actors such as local government, media, enterprises, and civil society have set off a "panda fever" to various degrees. And because the giant panda as a cultural symbol has been deeply connected with China, while attracting the attention of all walks of life in German society, the "panda fever" also played a role in promoting the inter-cultural communication and people-to-people exchanges between China and Germany to a certain extent.