BERLIN, Germany (CCTV) — Visitors flocked to the new panda garden in Berlin Zoo on Thursday, on the first day it was opened to the public.
On Wednesday, a grand launch ceremony was held, officiated by visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
When the zoo gate was opened to visitors on Thursday, some raced directly for the panda garden to catch a first glimpse of the exciting new arrivals.
According to Andreas Knieriem, director of the Berlin Zoo, the two pandas, Meng Meng and Jiao Qing, from China’s Sichuan Province are settling into their new home.
“From the beginning, they started to drink, and to feed, to eat our food, not only the Chinese food, even our new bamboo from the Netherlands, and they both like that and that’s important because, you know, the Chinese food is very limited. We’ve brought one ton here to Berlin, so this is limited. What we see, they like the food, they like the accommodation,” he said.
Merkel promised to do everything possible to provide a comfortable life to the pandas.
Berlin Zoo reportedly prepared a dozen kinds of bamboo for each of the first ten days after the pandas arrived so that they could adjust to the new environment sooner.
The zoo director emphasized that looking after the welfare of their animals remains the priority.
“Right now, we have a bit more than 3 million visitors in the zoo each year. But if it would reach 3.5 or even 4 million visitors each year, of course we will be very very happy about it. But, to be honest, because these are animals, we would like to keep them very carefully that the visitors, or the masses of visitors are not the focus of us. We’d like keep them in a very proper way and all the needs of the animals, that is the most important wish,” Knieriem said.
In response to the spike in tourists, the zoo has set up a temporary passageway, and directed the tourists into different groups to keep them in order.
Tourists are thrilled to see the pandas, it being the first time they have ever seen a rare creature.
For overseas Chinese living in Germany, the pandas remind them of home.
“It is warm to see the pandas. We live in Frankfurt and there is no pandas over there. Berlin has pandas now, so we brought our kids here,” said a visitor.
Meng Meng, which means ‘sweet dream’ in Chinese, is a 4-year-old female panda, while Jiao Qing, meaning ‘darling’, is a 7-year-old male.
The two pandas, which have been sent to Germany on a 15-year conservation and breeding program, are not the first pandas given or loaned to the European country by China.
Previously, Berlin had Bao Bao who was sent to the city back in 1980 as a state gift from the Asian country.
By the time he died in 2012, he was then one of the oldest pandas in the world.
