Two giant pandas from China arrived in Atlanta, Georgia, on Sunday morning as part of an agreement between the Chinese and U.S. governments.
While in Washington DC for a three-day summit with Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that the pandas would arrive in Atlanta in the coming days. The loan of the pandas to Zoo Atlanta was one of the few concrete outcomes of Xi’s state visit with the U.S. president, which saw expressions of goodwill between the leaders but no resolution to long-standing disputes between the two countries.
Atlanta bid farewell to its last pandas in 2024, leaving the zoo without the bears. The new deal was announced in April, but without a date.
Ping Ping and Fu Shuang are the two adult pandas who will be loaned to Zoo Atlanta for 10 years as part of the agreement. They left Chengdu, southwest China, early Sunday aboard a dedicated Boeing 777 “FedEx Panda Express,” officials said. A new agreement between Zoo Atlanta and the China Wildlife Conservation Association makes Atlanta one of three zoos in the United States to house giant pandas.
Ping Ping and Fu Shuang were born in 2020 and raised at the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Base. The male Ping Ping has black circles around his eyes, while Fu Shuang, a female, has a slightly protruding forehead, according to the Xinhua news agency.
China has long used pandas as part of its global diplomacy, deploying them in loan programs as an expression of goodwill and letting loan deals expire when tensions arise.
Xi had said the loan program was an example of “the friendship between the Chinese and Americans.”
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