February 22
PANDA DIPLOMACY DAY
President Nixon met with Chinese Premier Zhou (Chou) En-Lai in Peking, China on this day in in 1972. Because this was the first time a U.S. President had visited the Peoples Republic of China, it sparked the beginning of a big thaw in U.S./China relations. While Nixon and the Premier were busy making history, Pat Nixon was visiting the Peking Zoo. It was there that she fell in love with the zoo’s giant pandas. She expressed her fondness for the cute creatures to Zhou who later shipped pandas Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing (Xing-Xing) to the U.S. as a diplomatic gesture of good will - known ever since as panda diplomacy. Mrs Nixon donated the pandas to the National Zoo in Washington, DC.
The adorable pandas attracted more than 20,000 visitors the first day they were on display to the public and were visited by 1.1-million people the first year. And it was on this day in 1973 that the U.S. & China agreed to establish liaison offices in Beijing & Washington DC.
Those Were the Days, the Today in History service from 440 International
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