TAIPEI: Caretakers from Sichuan packed their favourite bamboo and apple snacks, hundreds of security officers ensured their safe passage and a jumbo jet sent them on their way.
Last evening, two VIPs (Very Important Pandas) from China, Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan, arrived in Taiwan after a long day's journey.
Television cameras tracked their every move, from their departure from their breeding base in Sichuan before dawn, to their arrival at their new home at the Taipei Zoo as night fell.
A gift from China to Taiwan and the latest proof of cordial cross-strait ties, the pair will undergo quarantine before they are unveiled to the public during Chinese New Year at the end of January.
Tuan Tuan, a four-year-old male, is two days younger than the female Yuan Yuan.
'Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan will sow the seeds of peace, solidarity and friendship on Taiwan's soil,' Mr Zheng Lizhong, deputy director of China's Taiwan Affairs Office, said at a farewell for the pandas.
While many Taiwanese cannot wait to see the new arrivals, some have hit out at their politically sensitive names - which mean 'reunion' when put together.
'They're just animals but every move (by China) is calculated,' said Taipei-based political analyst Shih Cheng-feng.
For more than five decades, China has offered pandas as diplomatic gifts to countries ranging from the United States to the former Soviet Union.
Beijing had offered pandas to Taiwan three years ago but the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, which was in power then, turned them down as it saw them as a propaganda ploy.
China regards Taiwan as a part of its territory and hopes to reunify with the island eventually, but most on the island prefer the status quo for now.
Some 22 per cent of the 568 people polled by the Apple Daily newspaper said they would not go to see the pandas, which they view as China's tools for reunification with Taiwan.
Wary of a repeat of the violent protests during the visit of China envoy Chen Yunlin last month, the mass-circulation United Daily News even felt compelled to run an editorial urging the public not to harm the pandas.
The hostility towards them underlines how a segment of the Taiwanese society continues to be uneasy about the rapidly warming cross-strait ties, which have improved since Mr Ma Ying-jeou of the China-friendly Kuomintang won the presidency in March.
Just three days ago, China pledged 130 billion yuan (S$27.4 billion) in loans for Taiwan investors on the mainland to help them ride out the global financial crisis.
The pandas are the latest - and perhaps most popular - goodwill gesture from Beijing.
Politics aside, most Taiwanese are excited about the pandas. Some 53 per cent in the same Apple Daily poll said they would visit the pandas. Said eight-year-old Kao Yun-hsuan: 'I know I will need to queue, but no matter how long it takes, I will definitely see them.'
