A particular supply landed in Atlanta on Sunday, three days after Xi Jinping, China’s chief, stated his nation would quickly dispatch “envoys of friendship” to the US.
Two large pandas, a male named Ping Ping and a feminine named Fu Shuang, touched down at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Worldwide Airport on Sunday morning, in accordance with Zoo Atlanta. The bears traveled in a single day on a FedEx cargo aircraft emblazoned with a large panda snacking on bamboo after leaving a breeding middle in Chengdu, in southwestern China.
The duo traveled in custom-built crates beneath the supervision of Zoo Atlanta animal specialists. “The pandas had been the only real cargo aboard the plane, accompanied solely by contemporary bamboo, water, and an assortment of their favourite treats,” in accordance with FedEx.
The supply of the animals was a gesture of excellent will from Beijing and got here on the heels of Mr. Xi’s go to to the White Home final week, the primary in over a decade. The Chinese language chief met with President Trump and introduced that China would ship the bears to Zoo Atlanta.
The zoo stated final month that it had reached a analysis settlement with the China Wildlife Conservation Affiliation, one in every of two teams within the nation that analysis pandas and lend them abroad.
In line with Chinese language state media, the pandas will probably be on mortgage for 10 years. Each had been born in China in 2020.
Ping Ping and Fu Shuang at the moment are in quarantine at Zoo Atlanta, the place they’ll stay beneath shut remark for a few month.
However the zoo was nonetheless abuzz Sunday afternoon in regards to the large pandas — a species the Grant Park attraction hasn’t seen since Ya Lun and Xi Lun left city for the Chengdu Analysis Base of Large Panda Breeding in 2024.
“Regardless that we are able to’t see them as we speak, we all know they’re right here someplace,” stated Kaori Graybeal, a neuroscientist in Atlanta who got here to the zoo together with her toddler daughter. “The pandas are round!”
Ms. Graybeal had an opportunity to see the pandas two years in the past, simply earlier than the massive balls of fluff headed again to China.
“They had been so cute,” she stated, although “they had been simply sort of sitting there.”
Through the three-day go to to Washington final week, Mr. Xi described the bears as an emblem of friendship between the US and China.
The lavish ceremonies masked the heightened tensions between the 2 nations, together with over commerce practices and Chinese language army exercise round Taiwan and within the Pacific area. Past Mr. Xi’s promise of pandas, the summit ended with few tangible diplomatic outcomes.
Maria Repnikova, a Georgia State College professor with experience in Chinese language political communication, stated the panda mortgage was a part of China’s effort to melt its picture within the public eye.
“China’s overarching sort of mushy energy diplomacy is commonly very inflexible,” she stated.
“Panda diplomacy is one space the place China has been fairly profitable,” Professor Repnikova added. “It attracts a variety of the American public or younger individuals. It actually appeals. It sort of purifies and softens China’s picture.”
Zoo Atlanta is one in every of a handful of establishments in the US which have hosted pandas over the previous half-century, persevering with a Chinese language custom of panda diplomacy that stretches again to President Richard M. Nixon’s go to to Beijing in 1972.
After the primary girl, Pat Nixon, informed China’s premier, Zhou Enlai, that she liked the animals, Chinese language officers despatched a male-female pair to the Nationwide Zoo in Washington.
Over the following 20 years, the 2 produced 5 cubs (none of which survived) and drew crowds of thousands and thousands, in accordance with the zoo. This system’s success additionally impressed Chinese language officers to ship extra pandas — the final word symbols of sentimental diplomacy — to zoos in San Diego and Memphis, in addition to to ones in different nations.
Along with being one in every of Zoo Atlanta’s most endearing attracts, the earlier large pandas had been the themes of maternal behavioral analysis — or mother-cub dynamics — which Ms. Graybeal’s husband, Alan Emanuel, additionally a neuroscientist, discovered particularly intriguing.
“With their bumbling nature, it’s actually attention-grabbing how they’re discovering the fitting items of meals and in a position to establish precisely what they should survive,” he stated. “However this bonding with the dad and mom and youngsters may very well be actually attention-grabbing to check to how we try this ourselves.”
Ping Ping and Fu Shuang’s arrival on Sunday elevated the whole variety of large pandas in the US to 6.
In 2024, the Chinese language authorities despatched a pair to the San Diego Zoo and one other to the Nationwide Zoo in Washington, D.C., ending a monthslong spell throughout which there have been no pandas in the US.
