China will send a pair of pandas to Washington by the end of this year, the Smithsonian’s National Zoo said on Wednesday, breathing new life into a decades-long conservation partnership between the two countries.
The news of giant pandas returning to America’s capital came six months after pandas Tian Tian, Mei Xiang and their cub Xiao Qi Ji left the zoo last year in a departure symbolic of deteriorating Sino-US relations.
