2 giant pandas arrive at Zoo Atlanta in a rare loan from China
CNN, POOL, CCTV, CHENGDU RESEARCH BASE OF GIANT PANDA BREEDING, XINHUA, SUGAM POKHAREL, ZOO ATLANTA
By Steven Jiang, Issy Ronald, Mike Valerio, Chris Boyette, CNN
(CNN) — Two giant pandas on loan from the Chinese government as part of Beijing’s long tradition of “panda diplomacy” have arrived at Zoo Atlanta.
The pandas — a male named Ping Ping and a female named Fu Shuang — arrived on a FedEx flight Sunday from Chengdu, in southwestern China. They are the third pair of pandas to arrive in the US in the past two years, and their arrival at Zoo Atlanta comes with great fanfare given how rare the bears are in US zoos.
“We are elated to welcome Ping Ping and Fu Shuang and could not be more excited about sharing that joy with our Members, guests, city, and community in the coming weeks,” Raymond B. King, president and CEO of Zoo Atlanta, said in a statement.
In 2024, Zoo Atlanta returned four pandas who had lived at the zoo back to China, marking the end of a 25-year agreement between the zoo and China.
As the plane’s cargo door opened, CNN’s team at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport saw two large crates lowered to the ground and then each loaded onto a FedEx truck. With a police escort, the trucks left the airport for the 10-mile drive to the zoo.
Once at the zoo, the crates — emblazoned with the zoo’s logo — were lifted off the trucks by an orange forklift, and the pandas were brought inside to begin their residency in Atlanta.
Visitors to the zoo will have to wait to see the fluffy guests, as the bears will be housed in a biosecure area of Zoo Atlanta’s new giant panda complex for a routine quarantine period of about a month, according to the zoo.
The pandas departed Chengdu at 2:55 a.m. Sunday morning local time (2:55 p.m. ET Saturday), China’s state news agency Xinhua said. The flight came just a day after Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington concluded.
During that visit, which was intended to address rising US-China tensions, Xi and US President Donald Trump extended a trade truce and agreed to establish an AI hotline between the two countries.
Video from Xinhua showed fans waving placards as trucks carrying the pandas headed to the airport, from the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base in Sichuan province. Vehicles then towed two crates to the plane, and the crates were lifted aboard ahead of the nearly 16-hour journey.
In Atlanta, residents and businesses are also excited about the arrival of the two black-and-white furry animals.
Katy and Zach Justice told CNN’s Rafael Romo they are looking forward to once again having the opportunity to visit pandas in their city, but this time with their young child.
“We have our baby, so we’re excited to take her to the zoo for the first time and get to see the pandas again,” Katy said.
And it’s not just families in the area that are eager about the newest zoo addition, but also businesses. Local favorite Ollie’s Market and Deli had a sign outside its door welcoming Ping Ping and Fu Shuang in both English and Chinese.
China also arranged for several veterinarians and breeders to remain at the zoo in Atlanta as the pandas enter quarantine upon arrival, the agency added.
The team at Zoo Atlanta and the Chinese team held “many online and offline meetings to carry out in-depth exchanges on the upgrading and transformation plan” for the venue that houses the pandas, which will be on loan from the Chinese government, according to Xinhua.
“What Zoo Atlanta has been working hard for the past year is making improvements to our enclosures, where our enclosures are a lot bigger,” Sam Rivera, the zoo’s vice president of animal health, told Xinhua. “We’re ensuring that we have plenty of bamboo for them to eat. We have experienced keepers that are trained on taking care of giant pandas.”
Rare, fluffy and irresistibly cute, pandas are adored across the globe. The animals once roamed a vast swath of China, along with parts of northern Myanmar and Vietnam, but human encroachment and climate change shrank the habitat of the bamboo-munching bears to just six mountain ranges above the Sichuan basin, deep in China’s hinterland.
Hailed in imperial times as the “land of heavenly abundance,” Sichuan is now better known as the “hometown of pandas.” The mountainous province boasts a latticework of panda nature reserves and breeding centers, all built in recent decades as China – and the world – raced to save the multimillion-years-old “living fossil” from extinction.
Provincial capital Chengdu – a sprawling metropolis known for its spicy hotpot and old tea houses – sits at the foot of snow-capped mountains with misty old-growth forests where wild pandas still roam.
The city’s panda breeding base is the largest in the country, housing more than 240 bears – or a third of the world’s captive panda population. The sprawling facility draws up to 11 million visitors a year, on par with Shanghai Disneyland.
Mending ties, courting new partners
Loaning pandas has long been a tool of Chinese diplomacy, following a decades-long government effort to transform them from a little-known animal into a cultural icon and national symbol. For more than half a century, Beijing has dispatched these charismatic animals overseas to shore up alliances, mend estranged ties and court new partners.
“The giant panda has been an envoy of friendship between the Chinese and Americans,” Xi said on Thursday, referencing the half-century in which pandas lived in US zoos on loan from the Chinese government. That tradition was started by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1972, shortly after Richard Nixon became the first US president to visit China following the Communist Party’s rise to power in 1949.
One of the pandas bound for Atlanta even has the same name – Ping Ping, meaning “peace” – as the first ever panda Mao gifted to the Soviet Union in 1957. He was born on March 17, 2020, has large black patches around his eyes and is especially good at climbing trees, according to China’s National Forestry and Grassland Administration.
The other panda, Fu Shuang, meaning “double blessings,” was born seven months later on October 18. She has a small tuft of fur on the top of her head, a slightly protruding forehead and finds food very easily, the administration said.
In a report ahead of their journey, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV asked their keeper to describe the pair.
Ping Ping “is brave and gentle,” Fu Jia said. “During training sessions, when he spots me holding an apple, he will make soft whimpering sounds, eager for the treat.”
Fu Shuang, on the other hand, “is crazy about honey,” she said.
Zookeepers at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding selected the pair after considering their age, health, genetics and personality.
“They should be docile and like each other, and hopefully be able to mate naturally,” the park’s deputy director Li Mingxi told Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.
The zoo has hosted several pandas before. Another pair, Lun Lun and Yang Yang, had seven offspring there between 2006 and 2016 before returning to Chengdu.
Zoo Atlanta earlier in the year said it would be “delighted and honored” to welcome the two pandas.
A banner displayed at the zoo on Saturday read “The future home of Ping Ping and Fu Shuang.”
The loan costs about a million dollars a year per pair of pandas, CNN Correspondent David Culver explained, and any cubs Ping Ping and Fu Shuang have will eventually go back to China.
Chinese officials and the Atlanta zoo “will carry out in-depth academic and cultural exchanges to continuously enhance mutual understanding and friendship between the people of China and the United States,” Xinhua said.
Panda diplomacy has offered some relief from the tensions increasingly shaping the US-China relationship in recent years, as the two countries compete in an AI arms race and engage in a spiraling trade war.
Two giant pandas arrived in San Diego in June 2024, the first time China allowed new pandas to travel to the US in more than two decades. A second pair traveled to Washington’s National Zoo later that year.
‘Hard to say goodbye’
In preparation for the move, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang have been quarantined for a month with a roster of live-in carers, Li said. The pandas have been trained for their long flight too, becoming used to their crate and loud noises.
Late Saturday night, China’s ambassador to the US Xie Feng shared photos of the two pandas on his X account and said they were on their way.
“Get ready to greet our two fluffy stars!” he wrote.
Their departure would be a sad one for, Fu, their keeper.
“After caring for them for so long… It’s like raising your own children,” she told CCTV.
“They weighed barely over 100 grams at birth, and we nurtured them until they grew big and heavy. I won’t get to see them for quite a long time, so it’s hard to say goodbye.”
CNN’s Xiaoqian Lin, Farida Elsebai, Rebekah Riess, Eduardo Cuevas, Mitchell McCluskey and Shawn Nottingham contributed reporting.
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