China Exclusive: China's panda babies greet Year of the Monkey

As millions of Chinese head home for the Spring Festival, a dozen of panda babies have already celebrated the Chinese Lunar New Year at a breeding center in southwest China.

The China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda (CCRCGP), the world's largest artificial breeding center for the rare species, held a special new year greeting ceremony on Friday at its base in Ya'an, Sichuan Province, with baby pandas born in 2015 attending.

At a panda kindergarten at the Bifeng Gorge base, panda cubs between five to seven months were released from their dorm to a playground with a wooden stand decorated with traditional new year blessing items like red Chinese knots for good luck and gold ingots for wealth. The panda babies climbed up on the stand and played with monkey dolls too.

"On behalf of the panda population, we wish all the people a happy Year of the Monkey," said Heng Yi, the center's publicity officer, adding the ceremony aims to improve public awareness of environmental protection too.

Luo Bo, deputy chief of the center's animal management department, said the ceremony is also a sort of physical training for the cubs.

"They grow very fast at their age now and need more physical practice to improve their strength and fitness. Apparently, they love the dolls," said Luo.

A total of 26 pandas were born, including nine pairs of twins and one born to Mei Xiang at Washington's Smithsonian National Zoo of the United States in 2015. A record 23 cubs survived, the center said.

With the new cubs, the center currently has 218 pandas. The previous record was set in 2013, with 20 panda cubs added in a year.

Despite the early death of three cubs, the total number of survivors and twins have both set new records since the center was built in southwestern Sichuan Province in the 1980s, said Heng.

He attributed the baby boom to the more mature breeding techniques, frequent cooperation with foreign zoos and a bigger "talent pool" for the annual breeding program.

"Over the past two decades, we have seen a steady growth of pandas bred in our center, meaning we have more options when selecting healthy and biologically-suitable candidates for our breeding program," said Heng.

Giant pandas have a very low fertility rate because they are sexually inactive. Female pandas become pregnant only once a year and deliver three cubs at most each time.

The fertility of captive giant pandas is even lower because they do not move much, experts said. Endi