Taiwan to display Chinese pandas for Lunar New Year
Visitors will see Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan in their new home at Taipei Zoo on Jan 26, Lunar New Year's Day. -- PHOTO: AP
TAIPEI - TWO giant pandas presented to Taiwan by China are expected to go on public display for the Lunar New Year holiday later this month, officials said on Thursday.
Visitors will see Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan in their new home at Taipei Zoo on Jan 26, Lunar New Year's Day, said a Taipei city government spokesman.
'Tuanyuan' - a combination of the Chinese characters of the two pandas' names - means 'reunion' or 'unity'.
Zoo officials have said the four-year-old animals, currently in quarantine, are adjusting well to their new surroundings.
The city government, which invested around US$10 million (S$14.8 million) in an enclosure for the panda pair, expects them to attract six million visitors a year.
The pandas arrived in Taipei last month from their birthplace in China's Sichuan province as part of a series of measures by the two sides to ease tensions that have lasted since the civil war split them in 1949.
The pandas were earmarked as envoys to Taiwan in 2006 but their arrival was only made possible after Beijing-friendly President Ma Ying-jeou took office earlier this year. -- AFP
