AHTARI, Finland -- Four hours north of Helsinki by car is a town that's outwardly as sleepy as its two most famous residents, giant pandas Lumi and Pyry. Some 6,500 kilometers from the bears' homeland of Sichuan province, China, Ahtari is the backdrop for an intrigue that lays bare the financial cost of Beijing's 'panda diplomacy.'
As things stand, the zoo in Ahtari -- a small town with a population of 5,400 -- says it can no longer afford to keep the pandas, just five years into a 15-year, multi-million dollar contractual obligation to provide their home.
