The two giant pandas at the Smithsonian’s National zoo officially began their return to China on Wednesday.
The two panda bears, Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, had been in the United States on loan from China for more than two decades as part of a research agreement set to expire early next month. Their cub, three-year-old Xiao Qi Ji, is also going.
The giant pandas will be forklifted in a crate out of the zoo on Wednesday and then transported on a 19-hour flight to a panda reserve in Chengdu, which is in China’s Sichuan province. The bears will travel on a 777F plane called the “FedEx panda express”.
The US received its first pandas from China in 1972 after Richard Nixon told the Chinese premier at the time, Zhou Enlai, that he loved the animals. Their continued presence in the US has come to be understood as a symbol of goodwill between China and the US, or what some call “panda diplomacy”. The pandas remain in the United States under an agreement with their Chinese counterparts.
Panda experts told the New York Times the animals had reached the age when they should return to China. “They are at the age when they should be in China,” said Melissa Songer, a conservation biologist at the Smithsonian National zoo, told the New York Times. “I don’t want to have a panda pass away outside of China.”
The departure of Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and Xiao Qi Ji means that the Atlanta zoo will be the only zoo in the US with giant pandas, and they are set to return to China next year. The National zoo plans to ask Chinese officials for a new pair of pandas, the Times reported, though there is some speculation that rising tensions between the US and China may prevent another agreement from going into effect.
