Mascot diehards camp out for Bing Dwen Dwen dolls
Long lines outside a flagship store in Beijing's Wangfujing shopping area on February 8, as people wait to buy the mascot of the Beijing 2022 Winter Games.
Die-hard fans and scalpers queued overnight for the chance to order anything in the likeness of the Winter Games mascot, a panda bear named Bing Dwen Dwen, as factories scrambled to ramp up production to catch up with demand.
Armed with foldable stools, self-heating adhesives and battery-operated hand warmers, hundreds of people braved the freezing temperatures outside a flagship store in Beijing's Wangfujing shopping area.
They were undeterred by a recording that blared repeatedly saying that everything, the soft toys, figurines, key chains, snow globes and blind boxes, was sold out.
"I already queued on Monday night, but there were 1,200 people in front of me, so by the time the store opened in the morning, there were none left for me," said a man in his 30s who only gave his name as Deng.
Unfazed, he queued up on Tuesday afternoon and was fifth in line when the store opened on Wednesday.
For his troubles, Deng and the other lucky first 500 customers merely got the chance to order one soft toy per person, which he can only pick up on February 22, two days after the Beijing Olympics end.
Meanwhile, Deng consoled himself with a photo holding a stuffed Bing Dwen Dwen, whose name is officially translated to "ice child" but colloquially means "chubby ice child" in Mandarin, that he posed with at a supermarket display.
Games organizers attributed the tight supply of mascot souvenirs in part on the shutdown of factories during the weeklong Chinese New Year holiday that ended on February 6, but promised an increase in production to meet the demand that surged as the Beijing Games began on February 4.
A factory in Fujian Province, over 1,000km from the capital, told Beijing News on Monday that it will resume production earlier than planned but would make just 4,000 products per day.
Police have punished three men for reselling Bing Dwen Dwen
merchandise at inflated prices, the official Xinhua news agency
reported on Wednesday.
Deng said he will not buy from scalpers.
"It's not about the money, we can afford the few extra hundred yuan," he said. "It's about getting the mascot by my own effort that makes it memorable."
