The arrival of Yang Yang and Lun Lun, a pair of pandas from Chengdu at the Atlanta Zoo in 1999 on a ten-year loan from the Chinese government has proved to be of great significance, said Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin in an interview with chinadaily.com.cn.

Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin. [jfklibrary.org]

She made the remarks on Monday local time while meeting an 11-member delegation comprised of government officials, a panda researcher and media from Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan Province. The city has a population of over 10 million people and is home to 80 percent of the world's pandas.

Atlanta was the first city in the United States to receive pandas on loan from China, Franklin said.

She said she often took her grandson to the Atlanta Zoo to see the pair of pandas, and that the panda's staple food, bamboo, grows in her backyard.

The pandas have boosted tourism in Atlanta and helped put the city on the map, the mayor said.

More importantly the pandas have served as a bridge between Chengdu and Atlanta, which has a positive influence not only on the current population, but also future generations, Franklin said.

"More and more young people are starting to learn more about China and Chengdu. As far as I know, many of them have been to Chengdu or are planning to visit Chengdu," she added.

The mayor said she would go to Chengdu and further the friendship between the two cities after receiving an invitation to visit in October to participate in the Chengdu International Food and Tourism Festival and the opening of the Jinsha Ruins Museum in October. The museum is dedicated to ruins, excavated in 2001, that indicate the city is 3,000 years old, not 2,300 as previously thought.

The Atlanta zoo was the second stop on an 11-city world tour for the Chinese delegation, which is filming a panda TV documentary and promoting Chengdu. The first stop was another American city, Memphis, Tennessee.

The giant panda has been around for about 3 million years and many animals from its era are extinct.

Due to human activities and the degeneration of the environment, the panda's natural habitat has been shrinking. There are only some 1,5 00 wild pandas left in the world.

Chengdu is home to the world's only giant panda breeding and research base built in a large city. There are 48 pandas in the base, according to Tan Hongming, deputy chief of the base.