1st Edition

A Panda the Nation Could not See Diplomacy, Fandom, and Miss Panda of Republican China

By Yulei Guo Copyright 2027
386 Pages 55 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Before most Chinese citizens ever saw a giant panda in person, they had already fallen in love with it.  This book reconstructs how Republican China developed an emotional, political, and media-driven relationship with the giant panda from the 1920s to the 1940s, tracing the emergence of panda diplomacy, celebrity culture, and the earliest forms of panda fandom. Drawing on more than 2,000... Read more

Introduction 1. From Sichuan to the World 2. Ink and Imagination: The Panda in Republican Prints 3. The Chinese Explorer and a Certain Yang 4. Diplomacy in Fur and Claws 5. A Panda the Nation Could Not See 6. Tributes and Stockpiles 7. Nation and Race 8. Death, Mourning, and Slaughterhouse 9. Specimen, Chrysanthemum, and Facial Cream 10. Commerce and Science 11. Master Panda and Miss Shanghai 12. The Many Faces of Miss Panda

Biography

Yulei Guo is a researcher at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. She works on giant panda tourism, human-animal relations, and the cultural history of panda fandom in modern China, drawing on interdisciplinary approaches across tourism studies, media history, and the environmental humanities.