i'm pleased that it pleases our very tall friend, and i quite see baobei means precious treasure, but i have great difficulty making su lin come out as “a little bit of something very cute” in chinese. i do believe the san diego zoo has misled the american public so successfully that over 30 000 votes were cast for a name that doesn't mean what the voters think it does!

the last time i remember such a fuss over a panda's name was when i was still at uva and the dc zoo received two pandas on loan, and the washington post drew umbrage for inaccuracy because they had explained, in a feature about the new pandas, that the name of one of the pandas, mei xiang, is pronounced may shyong, which i thought an acceptable approximation. the critics pointed out that shyong would mean fierce (xiong) and the counter-critics said they were pedantic and that for that matter seeang is only beijing pronunciation it would be something else altogether in cantonese, and all i could think of was good thing the americans are only familiar with cantonese and mandarin if they had known any hokkien she might been called pang pang.