Dancing pandas grace the stage for Chinese punk (pop) bands:

Why don’t American pop bands have giant bald eagles dancing around, or at least brown bears and beavers?

I think Caffe-In’s best song is “Mario and Peaches”. An arguably better band, with an awesome name to boot, is Carsick Cars. Their “Zhong nan hai” is catchy but they also play a song called…”Panda”. Could the image of a panda be so ubiquitous in China that it also provides a form of shelter for commentary and dissent? On the other hand, maybe the pandas are state spies observing the crowd.