It started last week when the girls learned about the official mascots of this year's games at their friend's house last week.
Fuwa.
Each Fuwa represents one of the five Olympic rings and incorporates the most popular animals in China (complete with nicknames) - Fish (Beibei), Panda (Jingjing), Tibetan Antelope (Yingying), Swallow (Nini) and the Olympic Flame (Huanhuan).
Their names - Bei Jing Huan Ying Ni - mean:
"Welcome to Beijing"
My kids think they are pretty slick in knowing how to say Welcome to Beijing in Chinese.
I think it's a clever way to introduce children to the Olympics - and much more interesting than some of the previous Olympic mascots (like the live raccoon Lake Placid mascot that died before the games began). And in case you were wondering, Canada has already released their mascots for the winter games in Vancouver in 2010. I couldn't help but smile after meeting Quatchi - "a young sasquatch who comes from the mysterious forests of Canada."
Not as clever as Fuwa but definitely offers some entertainment value for adults as well as kids.
If your kids are enjoying the current Olympic games (or you want them to get interested in them), here are a few resources to learn more about the Fuwa:
Fuwa on Beijing 2008 This is the official website for the Beijing games and has the full explanation about the Fuwa.
Coloring book pages of Fuwa (about 1/2 way down the page)
The Wikipedia version of Fuwa also includes a bit more history about the unfortunate first naming of the mascots along with some parodies, superstitions and conspiracy theories (less we forget that kid-oriented stuff is not immune to that kind of thing either).
And if you're kids enjoy Anime-type cartoons (and don't mind that they're in another language as my Anime fans don't care so much about that) here's a sampling of the Fuwa TV show that has been running in China for a couple of years. Apparently the Fuwa TV show was introduced on November 11, 2005, at an event marking the 1000th day before the opening of the games but L. has enjoyed 'discovering' this show on YouTube this weekend.
The introduction of Fuwa on Chinese television
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