The Olympic Committee of Beijing 2008 had chosen 5 characters to form the set of official mascot, which is named as Friendliness �娃(fu wa).

 

Note that the first word of the name of each Fu Wa makes up the phrase ”Bei Jing Huan Ying Ni” (北京欢迎你), which means Beijing welcomes you. These Fu Wa(s) were transformation of fish, panda, olympic flame, Tibetan antilope and swallow in the form of cartoon.

A day after its launching, handrails in subway were decorated with the feature of Fu Wa like this:

and this:

 

My mom thinks Fu Wa HuanHuan is cute. Maybe because her favourite colour is red. She called and asked me to get her a set of 5 Fu Wa. I went to the souvenir shop in my campus, checking out the stuffed toy Fu Wa. One whole set of the 25cm Fu Wa is priced at RMB640! In the end, I bought only the red one for her. According to the shop keeper, they were instructed not to sell the Fu Wa individually. But I’m so lucky that the owner of the shop took 3 other Fu Wa for himself, and I managed to get one of the “leftover”. Weird instruction. I wonder how many people would afford to buy one whole set of Fu Wa?

Of all ‘piratable’ goods in China, the olympics related products were under very strict regulations to avoid illegal duplication or unlicensed manufacturing. Chinese government are have issued documents to protect the olympic merchandise. Every licensed merchandise comes with an authenticity seal or sticker with watermark and other safety features. And all merchandise were sold only by appointed retailers, means you can’t get cheaper or pirated olympic stuff in mass consumer market. Guess these little Fu Wa will be making lots of money for Beijing.

 

 

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