Yang Yang, a female, and Long Hui, a male, both two and a half years old, from the Wolong Nature Reserve in the southwestern province of Sichuan, are on loan for 10 years.

The two artificially-bred pandas are currently living in a semi-wild condition in Wolong. On Wednesday, they enjoyed their last full day before departing in a rare spring snowfall.

Four Austrian zoologists and zookeepers have arrived at Wolong to learn how to feed and keep pandas and to improve relations with the two cubs.

China will send one vet and one panda keeper with the pandas to Vienna, where they will stay for one month to help local staff to make the two animals live comfortably.

The lease was approved by China's State Council and the State Forestry Administration, said Zhang Guiquan, vice-director of the China Giant Panda Protection Center.

"It's part of the two countries' joint research program on giant pandas," Zhang said.

He said the change of environment would not affect the pandas' physical state since Chinese experts had already checked the conditions at Schoenbrunn Palace zoo carefully.

The panda house, temperature and food all met satisfactory conditions, said Zhang.

Zhang said Europe currently has only two other pandas in Berlin, Germany.

The zoo in Austria had prepared two exhibition halls for Yang Yang and Long Hui. In addition, two outdoor playgrounds of 400 and 600 square meters respectively with swimming pools have been built for them.

Five special keepers are designated to look after the beasts in Vienna. The zoo at northwestern Vienna will import bamboo shoots from France in addition to local food.

Pandas have long served as goodwill gestures from China since 685, when Empress Wu Zetian, of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), presented a pair to Japan as gifts.

Altogether, New China gave 23 giant pandas as state gifts to nine countries in more than 20 years after 1957.

Since 1985 China has sent dozens of "panda delegations" to other countries.

China has worked hard to save the animal, but the pandas remain endangered because of loss of habitat and their low reproductive rate.

Only about 1,000 pandas are believed to live in the wild in the mountains of southwest China and 110 more live in captivity throughout the world.

The World Wildlife Fund chose the giant panda as its logo in 1961 when the organization for wildlife protection was established.

(People's Daily March 13, 2003)