There are two giant pandas here at Edinburgh Zoo - Yang Guang and Tian Tian. Yang Guang is our male panda whose name means Sunshine in Mandarin and Tian Tian is our female panda whose name means Sweetie.
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Because the pandas were sent on loan to London specifically to breed, the failure meant that the pandas were eventually split up and sent to other breeding programmes. Bao Bao was sent back to Berlin Zoo after a few years.
In 1984, China ended panda gifts, switching to a policy of high-priced loans. This history has made Mexico one of a few countries able to keep locally born panda cubs. Since 1985, the loan program has required that zoos return any cubs to China.
The Chinese government, which gifted the first pair of pandas - Hsing Hsing and Ling Ling - to the U.S., now leases the pandas out for a typical 10-year renewable term. The annual fee ranges from $1 million to $2 million per pair, plus mandatory costs to build and maintain facilities to house the animals.
Panda diplomacy is the practice of sending giant pandas from China to other countries as a tool of diplomacy. From 1941 to 1984, China gave a gift of pandas to other countries. After a change in policy in 1984, pandas were leased instead of given as a gift.
The San Diego Zoo returned its pandas in 2019, and the last bear at the Memphis, Tennessee, zoo went home earlier this year. The departure of the National Zoo's bears would mean that the only giant pandas left in America are at the Atlanta Zoo — and that loan agreement expires late next year.
Visitors can observe the panda bears undisturbed through large glass windows around the enclosure. The indoor areas are also accessible to visitors through a walkway. Berlin is welcoming to the two future darlings of the public, who are the only giant pandas in Germany after the death of panda male Bao Bao in 2012.
Former San Diego Zoo panda keeper Dallas Dumont explains that the giant pandas were never expected to remain here forever. “We knew when we started the program that they were not our bears and that they wouldn't be staying… China believes in having their animals retire back in their country.”
It's the end of an era at the San Diego Zoo as the last two giant pandas will soon leave for China. In an announcement Monday, zoo officials said the pandas, Bai Yun, 27 — a fixture at the zoo for 23 years — and her son, Xiao Liwu, 6, would leave San Diego because a multiyear agreement with the Chinese had ended.
A family tree of Mexico's pandas dates back to 1974, when Pe Pe and Ying Ying were born. China gifted the pair to Mexico a year later. When their daughter Shuan Shuan died at 35 years old in 2022, Xin Xin became the zoo's last panda.
China began to offer pandas to other nations only on ten-year lease. The standard lease terms include a fee of up to US$1 million per year and a provision that any cubs born during the lease period be the property of the People's Republic of China.
Loaning pandas was seen as promoting mutual partnerships between China and the recipient countries. In turn, host countries would pay an annual fee of about $1m per bear, and there's an understanding that panda cubs born abroad would have to be returned to China before their fourth birthdays.
China technically owns every panda in the world. The pandas are rented to zoos throughout the world for sometimes as much as one million dollars per year.