Close connections

The marriage of Long and Dong, thanks in no small part to Ying Ying, embodies the strong bonds between Hong Kong and Sichuan developed through panda connections.

Before Ying Ying and Le Le's arrival, the central government sent the first pair of pandas — An An and Jia Jia — to the city in 1999 to mark the two-year anniversary of Hong Kong's return to the motherland.

The 8.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Wenchuan region of Sichuan on May 12, 2008, also brought Hong Kong and the province closer together.

The quake severely damaged the Wolong National Nature Reserve, located less than 20 kilometers from the epicenter of the temblor in Yingxiu town.

He Yongguo, director of the Shenshuping Base in Wolong, recalled that the base was almost completely destroyed. Most of the animal enclosures had collapsed, the giant pandas were extremely frightened, and all roads connecting to the outside world were cut off.

In no time, Hong Kong raced to provide aid to reconstruct Wenchuan, including the heavily-damaged Shenshuping Base. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government provided HK$10 billion ($1.28 billion) for 190 projects over eight years. A total of 151 projects were handled by the HKSAR government, and 32 by nongovernmental organizations.

Twenty-three of the reconstruction projects were in the Wolong National Nature Reserve. The flagship projects were Dujiangyan Base and Shenshuping Base — the two panda bases of the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda. The reconstruction efforts were jointly headed by seven well-established architects from Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland. The reconstructed bases received the highest three-star rating from the China Green Building Label system, and became important facilities for international panda conservation and research exchanges.