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Musicians invited to portray Chengdu's Panda 51

Three hundred musicians from 16 countries and regions were invited to draw colored pictures of a giant panda in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, on Thursday.

The musicians, from countries including the United States, Canada, Russia, Australia and Japan, were gathered for a weeklong event to promote cultural and art exchanges between Chengdu, its sister cities and cities with friendly ties.

Twin sisters from Hawaii portrayed the panda by the seaside with a surfboard, dressed in a Hawaiian hula skirt decorated with flowers. "We put things we love on the drawing together with the panda because we love it so much," said Tiana and Taja.

The drawings are based on a sketch of Panda 51, an 8-year-old panda named for its low birth weight, by well-known Chinese artist Ye Yushan.

"Panda 51 was the lightest panda born in the world, and was thus named after its birth weight," said Hou Rong, a researcher at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding.

"The pictures will be on display in the city for the following three days. The musicians will also send postcards back to their countries and invite more panda-lovers to submit their colored drawings of Panda 51," said an official from the organizing committee of the 2014 Chengdu Creativity and Design Week.

Some of the drawings may be displayed at this year's Venice International Film Festival, according to the organizing committee.

Displaying the drawings of Panda 51 will be one of the major activities of the Creativity and Design Week, which will be held in Chengdu from Oct 1 through 14.