STORY: Washington National Zoo to receive two giant pandas from China by year end
SHOOTING TIME: May 29, 2024
DATELINE: May 30, 2024
LENGTH: 0:01:00
LOCATION: Washington D.C.
CATEGORY: SOCIETY

SHOTLIST:
1. various of the event

STORYLINE:

The National Zoo in Washington, D.C., announced on Wednesday it will receive two giant panda cubs, one male and one female, from China by the end of year.

According to a press release by the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI), Bao Li, a two-year-old male panda whose name translates into English as "treasure" and "energetic," will enter the zoo later this year. He is the son of Bao Bao and the grandson of Tian Tian and Mei Xiang.
  
Bao Bao, Tian Tian and Mei Xiang all stayed in the national zoo previously, and Bao Bao was born there.
   
Also coming later this year is Qing Bao, a two-year-old female panda. Her name means "green" and "treasure" in Mandarin Chinese.
   
The NZCBI also announced that it has extended a cooperative research and breeding agreement with the China Wildlife Conservation Association. Now effective through April 2034, the agreement will see the United States and China continue their cooperation in the conservation of the giant panda species.
     
The first pair of giant pandas ever in the United States, Ling Ling and Hsing Hsing, arrived at the Washington National Zoo in April 1972 as a gift from the Chinese government, a few months after then-President Richard Nixon's ice-breaking visit to China.
   
The arrival of Tian Tian and Mei Xiang in Washington in 2000 marked the beginning of China-U.S. giant panda research and conservation cooperation, since which time experts from the two countries have collaboratively bred 17 panda cubs in the United States who survived to adulthood, all of them enthusiastically adored by the people of both countries.
   
Xinhua News Agency correspondents reporting from Washington D.C.
(XHTV)