Giant pandas Ping Ping and Fu Shuang made their public debut at Zoo Atlanta on Friday, chewing bamboo and lounging in their new habitat as crowds lined up to welcome the bears back to the city after a two-year absence.
The pair, both six years old, arrived in Atlanta from Chengdu, China, on September 27 aboard a FedEx Boeing 777 flight dubbed the "Panda Express," and spent the following weeks in quarantine and acclimating to their new home. They greeted visitors on Friday in the newly renovated Arthur M. Blank Panda Grove, a habitat upgraded with $6 million in grants from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation.
Ping Ping, the male, was born on March 17, 2020, and Fu Shuang, the female, on October 18, 2020, both at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. They are on loan to Zoo Atlanta for 10 years under an international cooperative research agreement with the China Wildlife Conservation Association, and the zoo hopes the pair will prove suitable mates.
Zoo Atlanta is one of three zoos in the United States that now house giant pandas, alongside the National Zoo in Washington and the San Diego Zoo. Atlanta first hosted pandas on loan from China in 1999, and seven cubs were born at the zoo, but its enclosure had been empty since 2024, when four pandas returned to China, ending a 25-year partnership amid strained relations between the two countries.
Chinese Ambassador to the United States Xie Feng attended Friday's debut and said the pandas' arrival "marks the renewal of a decade-long bond between China and Zoo Atlanta." Zoo Atlanta president and CEO Raymond B. King called the opening an occasion extending beyond the zoo itself, to the city, the state of Georgia and beyond.
