The Shanwei Zoo in China's Guangdong province has reportedly painted a pair of Chow Chows to resemble pandas Brenton Blanchet is a writer-reporter at PEOPLE. He has been working at PEOPLE since 2022.

At the time, zoo officials told Chinese state media they had advertised them as “panda dogs,” and did not ... However, officials defended their choice to paint the dogs, noting they weren ...

a type of spitz dog from northern China with a thick coat. The zoo, however, has denied they misled people as they never claimed the dogs were pandas, explaining instead they were 'panda dogs'.

Zoogoers in China have been left outraged after discovering ... of the sham by bizarrely claiming the animals were a breed of “panda dogs.” It later came clean, though, and admitted it had ...

A Chinese zoo admitted to painting dogs to resemble pandas ... (X/syncronus) (Also read: ‘Panda dog’: China zoo paints chow chow dogs to look like pandas, fools thousands of visitors ...

Several Chinese zoos have made headlines previously for painting animals to resemble more ... their eyes and ears to resemble endangered panda bears - but they were still very obviously chow ...

But the giant panda hasn’t always been an emblem of the Chinese nation. Throughout much of history, these elusive bears left little impression on Chinese literature and art, let alone holding ...

WASHINGTON--China’s panda diplomacy may have one true winner: the pandas themselves. Decades after Beijing began working with zoos in the U.S. and Europe to protect the species, the number of ...