A woman sends off giant panda Tai Shan at the Washington Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia, outside Washington. DC, capital of the US, February 4, 2010. The four- and-half-year-old male giant panda will fly directly to Chengdu, southwest China.  [Xinhua]

According to Huang Yan, deputy general engineer of the China Conservation and Research Center, Tai Shan was calm in his new home.

"After a long flight of about 15 hours and meeting many people, Mei Lan is nervous in her temporary home in the quarantine house in Chengdu. She runs here and there, climbs up and down railings and breathes quickly," Huang told China Daily. He said it could take her one or two days to adjust to her new surroundings.

Both pandas will be in quarantine for 30 days before they are presented to the public.

After quarantine, Tai Shan will live in a 30-sq-m den in the so-called No 1 Villa, which is the most frequently visited venue at the Bifengxia Base. He will also have 1,000 sq m of land where he can climb trees and frolic with other pandas his age, said Tang Chunxiang, an expert with the China Conservation and Research Center.

Before Tai Shan left the airport in Chengdu, a ceremony was held to mark its lifelong adoption by a Sichuan auto firm. Any individual or firm adopting a panda offers money to the bear each year.

Li Desheng, deputy chief of the China Conservation and Research Center, did not reveal how much the Sichuan firm had paid.

Many individuals and firms had shown interest in adopting Mei Lan, according to Zhang Zhihe, chief of the Chengdu Research Base.

(China Daily February 6, 2010)