China's 'candied' panda mascot sweetens Olympic hearts

On Sina Weibo, the Olympic panda has also been top of the trending topics. As of Sunday, "Bing Dwen Dwen" has garnered more than 2.26 billion views and 656,000 comments. Other topics, including "Bing Dwen Dwen emojis", "Winter Olympic top favorite Bing Dwen Dwen", "How cute is Bing Dwen Dwen" and "How to own a Bing Dwen Dwen", have also been very popular.

Souvenirs have sold out on the official online licensed Tmall store. Fu Yuchen, 27, from Chengdu in Sichuan province, said that she wanted to buy Bing Dwen Dwen merchandise after she saw the mascot at the opening ceremony, but that she had been too late.

"I kept refreshing the store page the whole evening, but they were out of stock," she said, adding that a scalper has sold a Bing Dwen Dwen blind box for over 2,000 yuan ($315). The official price is just 700 yuan.

Other media reported that people waited in front of the licensed flagship store in Beijing from the wee hours of Saturday morning. Although the store didn't open until 9:30am, by 7:50am, one customer reported that there were already over 280 people in front of her.