Tuantuan and Yuanyuan, a pair of pandas the mainland has promised to send to Taiwan, are getting good care following the May 12 earthquake, said the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council on Friday.
According to the Wolong Giant Panda Nature Reserve in southwestern Sichuan Province, the two are getting the best of treatment, Yang Yi, spokesman for the office, told reporters.
Yang hoped that with cross-Strait efforts, the pandas would arrive in Taiwan safe and sound.
The animals were rescued shortly after the quake, which badly damaged the Wolong reserve and left several pandas at large.
The pandas were distressed and needed time to recover, according to Wang Pengyan, director of the China Giant Panda Protection and Research Center in Wolong.
Panda keepers are providing a form of "psychological counseling" to comfort the rare animals. They greet them by name, stroke their heads and maintain eye contact with them.
Six staff at the reserve were among the nearly 70,000 people killed in the quake, which was centered only about 30 kilometers from the Wolong reserve.
Within days of the quake, all 86 pandas raised at the Wolong center had been moved to a roomier, safer place, including Tuantuan and Yuanyuan.
China has 1,590 pandas living in the wild and 75 percent of them are in Sichuan.
Since 1972, China has lent 18 pandas to the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom and other countries as a goodwill gesture.
In an announcement posted on its website on May 25, the Management Bureau of the Wolong Nature Reserve committed itself to rebuilding the center as quickly as possible. "We will do our best to protect the giant pandas and preserve their core species," it says.
Source:Xinhua
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