Panda cub wows crowds at Taiwan zoo
A six-month old giant panda has been unveiled to her adoring public in Taiwan, as long lines of children queued up at Taipei zoo to see the cavorting cub.
Yuan Zai’s debut had long been anticipated on the island of 23 million people.
With delighted visitors passing in front of her cage at the rate of 40 per minute, Yuan Zai showed off her climbing skills before retreating to mother Yuan Yuan’s embrace, then heading off for a nap. She currently sleeps 20 hours a day.
Zoo chiefs say they will be able to accommodate 19,000 visitors a day to see Yuan Zai, whose parents came to Taiwan from China in late 2008.
Their arrival was seen at the time as a high water mark in Beijing’s use of “soft power” in Taiwan, which split from the mainland amid civil war in 1949 and remains the object of unwavering Chinese attempts to bring it back into the fold – by persuasion if possible, by force if necessary.
But politics seemed to be about the last thing on the minds of Yuan Zai’s fan base as again and again visitors’ faces lit up with broad smiles amid giggles of glee and repeated cries of “how cute” or “how beautiful”.
Chinese giant pandas have been a hit all around the world, but they seem to have a special cachet in Taiwan, where animal figures are so much in vogue that Taiwanese airline company Eva Airways has found that festooning its aircraft in the livery of fictional Japanese figure Hello Kitty provides a powerful boost to sales.
