Giant Pandas Return to Atlanta on a 10-Year Loan From China

Two giant pandas from China arrived in Atlanta on Sunday morning, ending a nearly two-year stretch in which Zoo Atlanta, which had hosted pandas for more than a quarter century, had none.

The pair, a male named Ping Ping and a female named Fu Shuang, were both born in 2020 and had been living at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in southwestern China. They made the trip aboard a Boeing 777 that FedEx dedicated to the flight and dubbed the Panda Express, landing at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. China’s state news agency, Xinhua, offered a way to tell them apart: Ping Ping has especially dark circles around his eyes, while Fu Shuang has a slightly rounded forehead.

The bears are on loan to Zoo Atlanta for 10 years under an agreement with the China Wildlife Conservation Association. They will spend about a month in quarantine in a biosecure area of the zoo’s new giant panda complex, where they will adjust to their surroundings and begin training with their keepers. The zoo has not announced when the public will be able to see them.

Raymond B. King, the zoo’s president and chief executive, called the arrival a historic moment for the city and the state. He told CBS News Atlanta that the zoo had missed having pandas, and he told FOX 5 Atlanta that protecting the species remains the most important benefit of the international partnership.

Zoo Atlanta took part in a panda agreement with China for more than 25 years. Its previous pandas, Lun Lun and Yang Yang, and their two youngest offspring returned to China in October 2024. With the new arrivals, Atlanta joins the San Diego Zoo and the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington as the only zoos in the country with giant pandas; both received new bears from China in 2024.

The pandas also carry diplomatic weight. Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the loan during a three-day state visit to Washington last week, and the loan was described as one of the few concrete results of a summit that produced warm words but left major disputes between the two countries unresolved. Xi called the program an example of friendship between the Chinese and American people. The agreement itself had been announced in April without a date.

China has long used pandas as gestures of goodwill, lending them to other countries and letting agreements lapse when tensions rise, which is why the loans are often read as a barometer of relations. Zoo officials frame the arrangement differently, as a conservation partnership that continues even when the two governments are at odds, and one that draws visitors whose interest in pandas extends to wildlife protection more broadly.

For now, Atlanta’s newest residents are out of sight. Atlanta News First reported that the zoo had been stocking up on fresh bamboo ahead of their arrival.