TAIPAI: A pair of Chinese pandas have helped a Taiwan zoo attract an extra half million visitors since their arrival from the mainland last year, a report said today.

Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan, a gift from China, moved to the Taipei Zoo

on December 23, 2008, triggering a massive panda-mania after the public was allowed the first glimpse of them in January, said local radio station BCC.

In 2009, ticket sales at the zoo totalled 3.7 million, up from 3.2 million last year, the report quoted zoo director Jason Yeh as saying, attributing the increase to the star animals.

The zoo is planning to celebrate the pandas’ one-year anniversary in Taiwan next week, Yeh said. The zoo keepers will also try to get the pandas to mate next year amid high hopes that they will be able to produce offspring, he said.

China’s decision to offer the panda couple to Taiwan was a symbolic gesture to show improved ties between the former arch enemies, governed separately since the end of a civil war in 1949.