Taipei zoo's veteran giant panda Yuanyuan celebrates her 20th birthday

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — With politics set aside, well-wishers gathered to wish the Taipei zoo’s senior panda a happy 20th birthday.

Visitors crowded around Yuanyuan's enclosure to take photos of her with a birthday cake in the shape of the number 20.

Yuanyuan was born in China and arrived in 2008 with her partner Tuantuan. He died in 2022 at age 18 but not before fathering two female cubs, Yuanzai and Yuanbao, now 11 and 4 respectively and still living at the zoo.

Danielle Shu, a 20-year-old Brazilian student in Taiwan, said she found online clips of the pandas an enjoyable distraction. “And I just find it really funny and cute,” Shu said.

Giant pandas are native only to China, and Beijing bestows them as a sign of political amity. Yuanyuan and Tuantuan arrived in Taiwan during a period of relative calm between the sides, which split amid civil war in 1949. China claims the island its own territory, to be annexed by military force if necessary.

Faced with declining habitat and a notoriously low birthrate, giant panda populations have declined to around 1,900 in the mountains of western China, while 600 pandas live in zoos and breeding centers in China and around the world.