A pair of giant pandas sent as a gift from the mainland to Taiwan arrived on the island yesterday in the latest sign of rapidly improving relations across the Straits.

The four-year old pandas — Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan — touched down at Taipei Taoyuan airport after a three-hour flight from Chengdu in Sichuan, with island residents watching spellbound as the journey unfolded live on local television.

The couple, with their combined name meaning "reunion" in Chinese, were carried aboard a special Boeing 747 plane of Taiwan's EVA Airways with three pilots and 10 stewards in line with "treatment for a head of state".

They left a breeding base in Ya'an of Sichuan at around 8:20 am yesterday and were taken on a truck to the provincial capital of Chengdu, about 120 km from Ya'an, and from there, left for the island by air.

Seventeen Chinese dove trees from the Beichuan Qiang autonomous county in Sichuan also arrived with the pandas. They were presented to express gratitude from earthquake victims to Taiwan people for their help after the May 12 devastation.

The pandas arrived a week after expanded transportation and postal links across the Taiwan Straits started.

Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan "will sow the seeds of peace, solidarity and friendship on Taiwan's soil, with the good wishes of 1.3 billion mainland compatriots," said Zheng Lizhong, vice-minister of the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office at a send-off ceremony at Chengdu airport.

"They will also witness with us the beautiful prospects of peaceful development of cross-Straits relations and the future of common prosperity," Zheng said.

The pandas' voyage was minutely chronicled by Taiwan's effervescent media. Newspapers carried front-page photographs of the pandas in their native Sichuan habitat, and TV stations followed the flight of the green-liveried Eva Airways jet carrying the animals to Taipei.