When eight 2-year-old pandas arrived at Beijing Zoo on Saturday after a long journey from their quake-damaged home Wolong reserve center, both the keepers and tourists cheered.

As the "national treasures", the eight cubs, flown to Beijing by a special charted plane, had narrowly escaped death in the recent 8.0-magnititue quake that rocked southwest China's Sichuan and has claimed more than 65,000 lives, including six staff members at Wolong Nature Reserve.

The eight pandas will spend the next six months in the capital as planned to add festivity to the upcoming Beijing Olympics.

Shortly after they arrived, the pandas were moved into an 800-square-meter glass house composed of seven pens, with air-conditioning and round-the-clock monitoring devices. Also provided for the pandas are four play grounds, including a pond, a lawn, a ladder and a terrace.

"We keep the indoor temperature at 25 degrees centigrade, so the pandas are ensured conditions similar to their natural habitat," said Zhang Jin'guo, vice director of Beijing Zoo.

In the meantime, the zoo managed to procure 240 kg of fresh bamboo and bamboo shoots from central China's Henan Province, as well as apples, carrots, milk powder, corn bread and mineral supplements, said Zhang.

Pandas are very picky and normally eat only fresh high-altitude bamboo shoots.

While the eight lucky ones get used to their new residency in Beijing, their fellow pandas back home are still in the quake trauma.

"Psychological counseling" for the rare animal was put in place, said Wang Pengyan, director of the China Giant Panda Protection and Research Center in Wolong, 30 km away from the epicenter of Wenchuan County.

To comfort the pandas, the keepers greeted them by names, touched their heads gently and maintained eye contact with them. "These methods prove to be useful, and most of them are mentally stable now," Wang said.

Panda keeper Gao Qiang still shivers when recollecting how the pandas survived the quake.

"Before we realized what was going on, a whole mountain had collapsed and rumbled, like a cyclone of huge rocks. The pandas were roaring with horror I never heard before."

Instinctively, the panda keepers ran to the open ground, but they returned to the building when they remembered the pandas.

"We treat the pandas like our own children. Do parents abandon their children when the disaster strikes?" said Gao emotionally.

Within seconds, the pandas climbed into the trees, not daring to move. Gao and his colleagues ran back amid aftershocks and crashing stones. They climbed up and held the pandas in their arms, before bringing them to the ground. "It was no easy job: they weigh 150 kg each, twice our size," he said.

More worrying were 14 cubs. When Wu Daifu, another panda keeper, rushed back, the rising river was approaching the six-month-old cubs, who were clinging together in such a big fear that "they were biting or scratching us violently," Wu said.

Rescue of the adult pandas was much more difficult. They scattered everywhere. For those who would not return willingly, anesthetic was the only solution.

"It was heart-breaking to use anesthetic on them," Wu recalled." We patted their heads, gave them comfort, and inserted the needle as slowly as possible."

The quake left two pandas injured and six others missing. Fortunately, five of them have been recovered safe and sound by Monday, he said.

The last panda at large is an adult, so it is more likely to avoid danger than the younger ones, said Xiong Beirong, an official with the Sichuan provincial forestry bureau. "We keep our fingers crossed for him."

To ensure their safety, the Center shipped six pandas the past Friday to the adjacent Ya'an, another panda breeding base, which was less affected by the quake.

Given the conditions in Wolong remain bad, the Center is considering moving more pandas to other safe habitats. Fourteen of 32 panda shelters were destroyed. A few were repaired, but collapsed again in strong aftershocks.

Food supply is another big challenge in Wolong, said Xiong. A panda spends 10 hours a day eating, and consumes 10 to 18 kilograms of fresh bamboo every day.

The supply of bamboo was suspended for a couple of days as locals were struggling to cope with their own losses, and stopped providing for the pandas. So the panda keepers had to go into the mountains to collect fresh bamboos, despite the risk of landslides or mudslides.

And the Center's food reserves lasted only two days and poor pandas lived on rice porridge for days.

On May 18, the State Forestry Administration ordered an emergency shipment of 1,500 kg of bamboo and other food, such as apples, soybeans, eggs and milk powder.

Following that, fresh bamboo began to arrive from Baoxing County, another giant panda habitat about 50 km southwest of Wolong.

"The road conditions are very poor and it takes much longer than normal to transport the supply. Thank goodness, the food crisis is almost over," said Zhou Xiaoping, an official with the Center.

Apart from Wolong, almost all 20 reserves for wild pandas at the Minshan Mountains in Sichuan were badly damaged in the quake, according to the Sichuan provincial forestry bureau.

China has 1,590 pandas living in the wild, 75 percent of them are in Sichuan, 17 percent in Shaanxi, and 7 percent in Gansu.

Among the pandas at Wolong rescued from the quake are Tuantuan and Yuanyuan, who have been offered to Taiwai as a goodwill gesture.

"The two pandas are mentally disturbed in the quake, and they need some time to recover," said Wang Pengyan.

Since 1972, China has lent out 18 pandas to the United States, Japan and UK and other countries.

In an announcement on its website on May 25, the Management Bureau of Wolong Nature Reserve has committed itself to rebuilding the Center as quickly as possible. "We will do our best to protect the giant pandas and preserve their core species," it says.

(Xinhua News Agency May 28, 2008)