HELSINKI, November 22. /TASS/. Two giant pandas, given to Finland after Chinese President Xi Jinping’ visit to Helsinki in 2017, are coming back home, Yle media outlet reported on Friday.

It took months to prepare the pandas to fly back to China. Zookeepers quarantined and vaccinated the animals, along with doing an overall health check prior to the long journey. The bamboo bears were trained to climb into special traveling crates, used to house them during their flight home. Chinese specialists came to collect the pandas from the Finnish zoo, Yle specified.

In September, a zoo in the Finnish city of Ehtaeri decided it had little choice but to return a pair of pandas given to Finland after the 2017 visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Helsinki. The reasons for bringing the pandas back to China are "various," but the main one is financial, as the zoo claims that declining visitorship makes it impossible to upkeep the animals.

Under its policy of panda diplomacy, China loans out giant pandas to other countries for display in their zoos. After the term is up, both pandas and any offspring must be returned to China. The giant panda is the unofficial symbol of China both in the country and abroad.