Giant panda Hua Mei born overseas back home
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-02-13 16:01

When Hua Mei's plane landed on in Beijing, the first overseas-born giant panda was warmly welcomed by her long-time-no-see fellow people.

Giant panda Hua Mei eats a biscuit on her arrival at the Capital Airport in Beijing, February 12, 2004. The giant panda, daughter of Shi Shi and Bai Yun, a panda couple leased to the San Diego Zoo in California, was born in the United States in 1999 and returned to China for the first time. Experts in Wolong Giant Panda Protection and Research Centre in Sichuan province have chosen four male pandas as her grooms-to-be and formulated her reproduction activities. [Reuters]

The chubby toddler, born in August 1999 in the San Diego Zoo, was transported to the land of her ancestors on a 10-hour flight across the Pacific, the Xinhua news agency said.

She will face a day of quarantine in Beijing and a further month in isolation at a southwestern nature reserve before being released into the wild.

Hua Mei's human companions prepared fresh bamboo and tasty biscuits for her on the plane.

"The 200-pound creature had a very good appetite!" said Li Desheng, a noted Chinese panda expert.

Hua Mei -- whose name means "China America" -- was taken back to China in honor of the agreement that brought her parents to the United States eight years ago, Xinhua said.

The 1996 joint Sino-US research program allowed for two giant pandas to go stateside, on condition that any offspring was returned to China after its third birthday.

This part of the contract never became a major issue, as the couple managed only one baby, Hua Mei, during six years in America.

The male half of the unproductive couple was repatriated to China in 2002, and replaced by a supposedly more virile member of the species.

Despite the dismal record of Hua Mei's parents, local zoologists hope that she herself will help add to China's panda population.

At four and half years of age, Hua Mei is at a golden age for mating, Xinhua said.

Giant pandas have helped put themselves on the list of the world's most endangered species because of a lack of interest in sex, which experts have sought to remedy with everything from Viagra to pornographic videos.

The inventiveness has not been rewarded to any significant extent, and only about 1,000 giant pandas are believed to be left in the wild.

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