Winter Olympics: eager fans of panda mascot Bing Dwen Dwen make their own souvenirs after stocks sell out
- Some stores have been forced to limit customers to just one panda souvenir each due to the overwhelming demand
- People have had to queue for hours at stores in order to purchase mascot merchandise
Bing Dwen Dwen, the name for a panda cub mascot dressed in a suit of ice, has been the most searched item on the internet in China for the past week.
The flagship store for Olympic products at e-commerce website Tmall.com said the small statuette for Bing Dwen Dwen was temporarily unavailable after more than 70,000 were sold since January.
In front of physical stores across the mainland, people have to queue for hours to buy one of the plastic figurines. Some shops have set a limit of one mascot souvenir for each customer.
At a store in Beijing’s Wangfujing commercial area, about 300 people had already queued outside by 6am on Sunday, three hours before the store’s opening time, The Beijing News reported.
One man surnamed Chen said he spent the whole night waiting to buy a stuffed toy of Bing Dwen Dwen for his girlfriend who loved the mascot’s cartoon image after seeing a Japanese TV reporter wearing six badges of the mascot when reporting on camera at the event.
“I just want to give her a surprise,” Chen said.
Outside a shop in the Chaoyang District in Beijing, one woman and her husband waited for more than two hours to buy a mascot souvenir. The woman said they needed to queue for another two hours before entering the shop to buy a mascot figurine for her daughter, a grade-two pupil at a primary school, who wanted the mascot after seeing it appear at the opening ceremony of the games.
“We have checked two other outlets and both of them said they’re out of stock,” the woman surnamed Liu said. “This shop allowed us to queue, meaning there is still hope that we can buy one.”
A statuette for Bing Dwen Dwen, meaning chubby ice child in Chinese, is sold at prices ranging from 78 yuan (US$12) to 128 yuan (US$20), depending on different sizes. A 20cm-high stuffed toy version is 192 yuan (US$30) and a key ring of the mascot is 68 yuan (US$11).
“Who can resist such a lovely Bing Dwen Dwen?” wrote one enamoured fan on WeChat.
“I’ve bought one to display on my desk. Its size is appropriate, it is delicately made and well designed. It’s quite worthwhile to buy this souvenir,” said one customer review on Tmall.com.
On Weibo, a woman released a video of her making sweet dumplings resembling the panda mascot.
“It’s too difficult to get a Bing Dwen Dwen at a shop. Therefore, our family decided to make an edible one,” said the woman in the video that has since been viewed 1.7 million times.
Videos of people demonstrating how to make a cake in the shape of the mascot or how to draw a matchstick figure of it have also been popular on Douyin.
02:16
China’s obsession with Beijing Winter Olympic panda mascot sparks souvenir buying spree
Zhao Weidong, a spokesman for the Beijing Organising Committee for the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, said the popularity of the panda mascot showed the public’s enthusiasm for winter sports.
“Many friends are asking where to buy Bing Dwen Dwen these days. It is in tight supply because the factories are closed during the Spring Festival. We are coordinating so as to boost the supply of this product,” Zhao told the China Youth Daily on Sunday.
“Meanwhile, you can show some interest in Shuey Rhon Rhon, the paralympic mascot which is also very nice,” he said.
