Hello from Press as panda pair give OK to Scots celebrity lifestyle

Press and television teams arrived to see the two that arrived at Edinburgh Zoo last week.

Paying visitors will be allowed to file past their enclosures from Friday. And the zoo is expecting enough extra customers to cover the substantial fee it is paying to China to have them on loan – the equivalent of a million US dollars, or £600,000, a year.

Yang Guang, the male, also known as Sunshine, already appears to be at ease in his new home and has been spending hours a day exploring its public areas, unbothered by the zoo staff watching. His prospective mate, Tian Tian (Sweetie), is more reticent and still remains out of sight much of the time .

The bears will remain in Edinburgh until 2021, when they and any cubs will return to China.

The zoo’s chief executive, Hugh Roberts, is forecasting a lift of up to 70 per cent in visitor numbers in the first year.

Western fascination with the animals goes back to 1869, when a French missionary took home a skin bought from a hunter.

A Chicago zoo got hold of a live one in 1936 and London Zoo got five in 1938.

Then wars and revolutions interrupted the trade until the People’s Republic of China donated a pair of giant pandas to the USA as a gesture marking a visit by US President Richard Nixon in 1972.

Reaction in America was summed up by First Lady Pat Nixon as “pandamonium”. And China has used gifts and loans of pandas as a diplomatic tool ever since.

The last one to live in Britain, Ming Ming, was sent home from London Zoo in 1994 and died in May this year, aged 34.

Alison MacLean, head of the team in charge of the Edinburgh pandas, said yesterday: “It’s fabulous how they’ve settled in. The Scottish weather is very close to what they would be used to.”