The Fuwa were the mascots of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The designs were created by Han Meilin, a famous Chinese artist. The designs were publicly announced by the National Society of Chinese Classic Literature Studies on 11 November 2005 at an event marking the 1000th day before the opening of the games. There are five Fuwas: Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying and Nini. Together, the names form the sentence "", or "Beijing huanying ni," which means "Beijing welcomes you". Originally named 'The Friendlies', they were promoted as 'Fuwa' when concerns arose that the name could be misinterpreted. While originally given artistic licence in his commission, Han Meilin was subsequently requested by officials to include various Chinese designs and fauna in the Fuwa. Han Meilin drew 1,000 models of possible Fuwa before settling on the five characters. He has since disowned the Fuwa and did not include them in his museum.
Mascots
Media
TV series
A 100-episode Olympic-themed cartoon series featuring the Fuwa was released in China, primarily on BTV, on 8 August 2007. Titled The Olympic Adventures of Fuwa, it was jointly produced by BTV and Kaku Cartoon. It ran from August 8, 2007 to October 1, 2007. There are also two sequels created by CCTV, Beibei's Promise and the Five Rings.
The China Environmental Awareness Programme program, started in 2001, has the Fuwa raising public environmental awareness by spreading clean, green messages.
Fuwa theater show
A large-scale fairy-tale drama entitled Friendlies has been directed by Beijing Children's Art Theater Cooperative to promote the five mascots of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. As ambassadors of peace, the Fuwa will make a world-tour, visiting all seven continents.
Parodies
Groups seeking to raise political issues in tandem with China's hosting of the Olympic Games have used the Fuwa or have created similar mascots.
Nu Wa, a monkey with a red bandana, was created by Amnesty International. Nu Wa means "angry young boy".
Gengen Genocide, a brown and yellow character wearing a gun and a fuel pump nozzle head-dress that forms a skull and crossbones, was developed by a group seeking to raise attention to the People's Republic of China's involvement in Darfur. Gengen's name is derived from the term genocide.
In addition, Beijing residents have allegedly created their own Fuwa set consisting of a duck, a dragonfly and a taxi. Collectively their names—"Ya", "Ting", "De"—spell out "bastard" in Beijing slang.
Superstitions
Wuwa
In the months leading up to the Olympics, coincidental similarities between the characters and several events became were noted on the internet blogs under titles such as "Curse of the fuwa". Some Chinese citizens have taken to calling the characters "Wuwa". Online criticism of the dolls has frequently been censored.
Nini, a swallow thought to be a kite, was blamed for the "kite city" of WeifangT195 train accident. Nini was also believed to be a locust, and associated with a locust plague that infested Inner Mongolia in June 2008.
Beibei is represented by a Chinese sturgeon. Five sturgeons were presented by China to Hong Kong with each fish representing an Olympic ring, in addition to the "motherland's love" for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The smallest of the five sturgeon was bitten by one of the barracudas housed in the same aquarium, and died the day after being publicly released into the city's theme park aquarium Ocean Park. Necropsy showed that the bite was not aggressive, but a reflex action from contact between the fish. Ocean Park said no one is at fault since in the almost 10 years the eight barracudas had been with the park, they had never showed any signs of aggression. Feng shui experts were divided about the death of the sturgeon, there were some that said this event may imply misfortune, and there were some that said 'the public did not need to worry too much because all fish die' and 'Can I say it's a bad omen for the Olympic Games if, for example, my five tadpoles—which I say represent the Olympic rings—die at home?'. Beijing's central government replaced the one that died with five more sturgeons.
Han Meilin
suffered two heart attacks while designing the Fuwa.
