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June 10, 2024 
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 | By Neel V. Patel Staff Editor, Opinion |
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We're not even done with June yet and it feels as if many of us are ready to wrap this year up. Several major conflicts with reverberations around the world, a presidential election of lugubrious proportions here in America, the specter of bird flu, the hottest summer on record poised to come down on us … oh, and the most exciting Knicks team in over a decade got knocked out of the N.B.A. playoffs.
But we can still have nice things: Pandas are coming back to America. Per a new agreement with China, a pair of giant pandas will settle down at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington this year, ending a hiatus that began in November when the zoo's last pair, Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, returned to their homeland. (As previously announced, another pair will be sent to the San Diego Zoo this year as well.)
As someone who grew up in the D.C. suburbs, I can't stress just how much this means to the city. The first pandas arrived at the National Zoo in 1972 as a gift from China, after President Richard Nixon's historic visit to the country to begin normalizing relations. They were an extraordinary symbol of the capacity of two nations with very different cultures and visions to bond over something. In the decades that followed, the National Zoo took immense pride in maintaining a steady presence of pandas through 10-year loans from China.
That pride extended to D.C.'s residents as well. The pandas have always been something of an unofficial mascot for the city, drawing visitors from far and wide to watch these creatures eat, play and nap. Millions more tuned into the zoo's panda webcam when they needed a respite from life's drudgeries. And you could see the pandas' likenesses plastered all over the town — I distinctly remember buying my first Metro card as a teenager and seeing an illustration of Mei Xiang and Tian Tian on the front.
In a guest essay for Opinion, the writer Vicki Croke shows us how it's in our nature to find joy in the existence of pandas. But more than that — she shows how they can cut through rising tensions and strengthen the bonds we have with our neighbors nearby and faraway. When the new pandas, Bao Li and Qing Bao, arrive at the National Zoo before year's end, the joy won't just belong to D.C. — it'll belong to all of us.
Read the guest essay:
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