They are the pride of Sichuan: local people believe that they are the very spirit of Sichuan. And now, like the five million other residents of the province left homeless and hungry by the earthquake, the giant pandas feel the pain of Sichuan.

Distressed, displaced and missing vital food, six pandas joined the exodus from the earthquake zone yesterday; the latest refugees whom the region can no longer support. They were loaded into lorries and taken to a reserve near the city of Ya’an, 120 miles (195km) from the worst-hit areas.

Another eight — possibly traumatised by the earthquake and its aftershocks — made a more glamorous exit from their mountain home. They were put on a special flight for Beijing. For them awaits the limelight of the Olympic Games.

“I’m not sure about the mental state of the pandas right now,” said Ye Mingxia, of the Beijing Zoo, in anticipation of their arrival in the capital today. “We will have to observe them carefully after they arrive.”

The Wolong breeding centre of Sichuan, famous throughout China, is home to 53 of the endangered giant pandas. Visitors come from around the world to admire them engaged in their two principal pastimes — eating and sleeping.The reserve that was their home is 20 miles from the epicentre of the earthquake on May 12. More than 50,000 people are dead, with thousands of children orphaned.

Daily trips into the mountains to harvest the bamboo so adored by the pandas have been a low priority for the few people who have stayed in the stricken area. With the reserve now cut off, the pandas’ keepers are worried about the animals’ diet.

The Chinese Government last week sent an emergency consignment of about five tonnes of bamboo and other feed to Wolong. More trips will be tough and the pandas are not happy without the locally gathered variety of bamboo.

Giant pandas are notoriously picky eaters. Their favourite breakfast, lunch and dinner is arrow bamboo — and when it flowers, once in a decade, the pandas have been known to starve rather than widen their diet. The demands of their stomachs are not small — pandas have digestive systems unsuited to processing bamboo leaves, meaning that they have to consume about 26lb (12kg) of leaves for the nutrition they need.

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