Two of China's giant pandas seem to be enjoying the care of two Austrian nurses before their departure for Schoenbrunn Zoo in Vienna for 10 years.

Petting a panda gently, Austrian woman Dungl Eveline has started routine feeding seven times a day: first milk, then specially-made grain foods and lastly their staple food, bamboo.

Her colleague, Ulzer Helmut, did more work during their two weeks training in China, chopping bamboo for the bears.

The two artificially-bred pandas are a female named Yang Yang (Sun), weighing 81 kilograms, and a male named Long Hui (Dragon Badge), weighing 90 kilograms. Both are two and a half years old --similar to the age of 10 in human development.

"Sometimes when Yang Yang is sleeping in trees, I call her and she will look at me, as if asking 'What do you want?' It's funny," said the bespectacled young woman. "I can feel, more or less, they're loving us after all our efforts at feeding them, petting them and playing with them in the past two weeks."

Both the keepers have years of experience in raising animals. Dungl raised bears and monkeys after her graduation with a degree in animal health care.

The Vienna zoo has prepared two exhibition halls for the animals, two outdoor playgrounds of 400 and 600 square meters respectively, each with a swimming pool.

Five special keepers are designated to look after the beasts in Vienna and bamboo shoots will be imported from France in addition to local bamboo.

(People's Daily March 14, 2003)