Baby shower for Taipei’s panda

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(Shanghai Daily) 08:17, August 05, 2013

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A panda cub seems to be waving from her incubator at Taipei City Zoo. It will be another three months before the first panda to be born in Taiwan makes her public debut.

TAIPEI Zoo held a “baby-shower” party yesterday to celebrate the one month birthday of the first panda born in Taiwan with the cub continuing to be a star attraction even though she has yet to appear in public.

Hundreds of children accompanied their parents to attend the party, during which a video featuring the baby panda’s growth was screened. Guests were also invited to experience what it is like to feed a panda cub in an incubator using a replica.

The yet to be named female cub was delivered on July 7 following a series of artificial insemination sessions after her parents, known as Tuan Tuan and his partner Yuan Yuan, failed to conceive naturally.

Yesterday’s party followed the Chinese tradition where parents hold a celebration around a month after their babies are delivered. The parents in Taiwan give cakes or oiled rice to friends and relatives in exchange for their blessings.

The cub, however, could not attend her own party. She has been kept away from the public’s gaze with the zoo saying visitors will need to wait three months to see her.

The cub was slightly injured by her mother a few days after she was born.

It is not unusual for inexperienced pandas to accidentally hurt their offspring and the cub was taken into the care of zoo experts after the incident.

The zoo said the cub has grown to 1,140 grams, more than six times her weight at birth.

Zookeepers yesterday also kicked off a naming campaign for the cub, with the public voting on what to name her and the final result expected to be announced on October 26.

Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan were given to Taiwan by China’s mainland in December 2008 and they have become star attractions at the Taipei zoo in addition to being a symbol of the rapidly improving ties between Taiwan and the mainland.

The island will be allowed to keep the cub as the panda couple were a gift from the mainland rather than a loan, Taipei officials have said.

Fewer than 1,600 pandas remain in the wild, mainly in southwest Sichuan Province.

A further 300 are in captivity around the world.