Ping Ping and Fu Shuang land in Atlanta, restoring Zoo's giant pandas after two-year absence

A FedEx Boeing 777 dubbed the 'Panda Express' touched down at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport at 6:51 a.m. Sunday, carrying two giant pandas from Chengdu, China, to their new home at Zoo Atlanta — ending a two-year absence of the bears from the city and delivering one of the few concrete results of Chinese President Xi Jinping's recent summit with President Donald Trump.

Both animals were born at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in 2020. Under a new International Cooperative Research Agreement on Giant Panda Conservation between Zoo Atlanta and the China Wildlife Conservation Association, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang will remain at the zoo for a decade. The arrangement places Zoo Atlanta among only three U.S. institutions with giant pandas — the others being the San Diego Zoo and the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, D.C. — and the sole such facility in the Southeast, according to the zoo.

Xi announced the loan during his three-day Washington summit with Trump, calling it 'a piece of good news' and describing the pandas as an 'envoy of friendship.' The summit produced expressions of goodwill between the two leaders but no resolution of longstanding disputes between the countries, making the panda announcement among its most tangible outcomes, according to the Guardian.

Ping Ping and Fu Shuang will come to their new home in Zoo Atlanta and meet with the American people in a few days.— Xi Jinping, Chinese President

According to CBS News, China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said the new round of cooperation "would help improve the health and well-being of the pandas, advance global biodiversity protection, and strengthen friendship between the Chinese and American people."

FedEx donated the transportation for the bears. Ping Ping, whose name was given at birth alongside his twin brother's as a blessing for a smooth and healthy life, is distinguished by dark black circles around his eyes. Fu Shuang — pronounced Foo Shwong — has a slightly protruding forehead; her name derives from 'Fu Lu,' a reference to her and her mother meaning 'happiness,' according to Zoo Atlanta.

This is a thrilling day for Zoo Atlanta and a historic moment for the City of Atlanta, the state of Georgia, and beyond. 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, Zoo Atlanta

Neither panda is yet visible to the public. During a standard quarantine period of roughly one month, the two animals are being kept in a biosecure section of the zoo's new giant panda complex. Zoo Atlanta has not announced a public debut date, the name of their new habitat, or design details of the expanded space.

The arrival closes a gap that opened in October 2024, when Zoo Atlanta's previous pandas — Lun Lun, Yang Yang, and their two youngest offspring, Ya Lun and Xi Lun — departed for the Chengdu Research Base. That original agreement, which ran from 1999 to 2024, produced seven offspring born to Lun Lun and Yang Yang between 2006 and 2016, including two sets of twins. Every one of those seven offspring is now based at the Chengdu Research Base.

China has long deployed pandas as instruments of soft power, offering loans as gestures of goodwill and allowing agreements to lapse when diplomatic tensions rise. The practice dates in the U.S. context to 1972, when Beijing gifted a pair of pandas to the National Zoo following President Nixon's opening to China, according to CBS News. The new Atlanta agreement had been announced in April 2026, but without specific arrival dates — those remained undisclosed publicly until the pandas were already in the air.

In 2016, the International Union for Conservation of Nature moved giant pandas off the Endangered list, reclassifying them as Vulnerable. About 72% of the roughly 1,900 individuals remaining in the wild are found on protected nature reserves. China has established 67 giant panda reserves, and in 2021 created the Giant Panda National Park to improve habitat connectivity, according to Zoo Atlanta and Fox 5 Atlanta.

Why it matters — The arrival restores giant pandas to the American South for the first time since 2024 and illustrates how animal conservation agreements have become a rare point of tangible cooperation between Washington and Beijing at a moment of broader diplomatic friction.

Reported by theguardian.com, pbs.org, cbsnews.com, zooatlanta.org, fox5atlanta.com