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Washington Says Goodbye to Pandas Amid Bitter US-China Backdrop 

Mei Xiang, a female Giant Panda, investigates a birthday cake presented to her on his 25th birthday at the National Zoo in Washington, US, July 22, 2023.
Mei Xiang, a female Giant Panda, investigates a birthday cake presented to her on his 25th birthday at the National Zoo in Washington, US, July 22, 2023.
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Washington Says Goodbye to Pandas Amid Bitter US-China Backdrop 

Mei Xiang, a female Giant Panda, investigates a birthday cake presented to her on his 25th birthday at the National Zoo in Washington, US, July 22, 2023.
Mei Xiang, a female Giant Panda, investigates a birthday cake presented to her on his 25th birthday at the National Zoo in Washington, US, July 22, 2023.

No matter the distance or the weather, Jane Christensen was determined to see the giant pandas before they left Washington.

Now in her 60s, Christensen told AFP she had been captured by the species' magical cuteness over a half-century ago, when China first gifted two pandas to the United States.

"I've had 'panda-monium' ever since,' she said under a chilly rain outside the Smithsonian National Zoo's panda exhibit - hundreds of miles from her home in Michigan.

All three of the zoo's pandas are leaving for China by the end of the year, bringing at least a temporary end to a decades-old connection between the cuddly animal and the US capital.

The zoo has kicked off a week-long "Panda Palooza" event ahead of the departure, welcoming thousands of fans, many outfitted in panda-themed hats and shirts.

And while the pandas' departure had been expected due to contractual obligations, many can't help but see the shift as reflective of the growing strains between Beijing and Washington.

The first black-and-white furballs arrived from China in 1972, as a gift following then-president Richard Nixon's historic visit to the Communist-led nation.

Recognizing the species' uncanny ability to attract fans -- and a potential source of income for its conservation program -- China continued to loan out pandas to Washington and other zoos around the world, since dubbed "Panda Diplomacy."

At the Smithsonian zoo, millions of dollars have been spent on the pandas' enclosure and studies, especially related to breeding, including a popular 24-hour "Panda Cam" to monitor their behavior and health.

"We've been watching on the live cam every day leading up to this point," said Heidi Greco, who traveled hours by car from Ohio with her family.

Her daughter Stormy, who had on a panda hat and carried a just-bought panda umbrella, is "obsessed with pandas," Greco said.

The family had watched the pandas make some laps around their separate outdoor enclosures, then passed through an indoor viewing area where visitors can watch the animals eat snacks and bamboo up close.

"When I heard that these pandas were leaving, and the Atlanta Zoo pandas were leaving, and there would be no panda bears left in all of North America... (except) one very old one in Mexico, I was really, really upset," said Greco.

Zoo Atlanta, in the southern US state of Georgia, will send its four pandas to China by late 2024.

'Soft power'

Pandas Mei Xiang and Tian Tian arrived in Washington in 2000, and have since had four surviving cubs. Xiao Qi Ji ("Little Miracle" in English) was born in 2020 and will also depart by December.

During Xi Jinping's state visit in 2015, the last by a Chinese leader to the United States, his wife and the US first lady held an official ceremony to unveil the name of panda cub Bei Bei.

Eight years later, with mounting tensions over Taiwan and continuing trade disputes between the two powers, the panda exhibit is about to be closed.

The Chinese government tends to "bestow" pandas on "nations with whom China's relations are on the upswing, as a form of soft power projection," said Kurt Tong, a former high-ranking US diplomat and managing partner of the Asia Group consultancy.

"In that respect, given the current tenor of US-China relations it is not surprising that Chinese authorities are allowing panda contracts with US zoos to expire," Tong said in an email to AFP.

He noted that the loans also help China "augment the panda conservation budget."

The Smithsonian pays $500,000 annually to its Chinese conservation group partner, the zoo said.

The pandas' departure "closes a major chapter of an international animal care and conservation success story," the zoo said in a statement, adding that it "remains committed to continuing its efforts to secure and safeguard a healthy future for giant pandas."

One attendee saying her goodbyes at the zoo highlighted successful efforts to grow the wild population of pandas.

"We've come a long way in getting the numbers back up," said Michaela from Maryland, who had her face painted like a panda. The species remains listed as vulnerable.

As the rain let up, a steady stream of visitors began filling the area around the panda's outdoor enclosure.

Known for being a bit sluggish, the panda made repeated laps around the acre-sized plot, climbing up and down the hills -- making sure everyone got one good, final snapshot.

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Varieties

Jimmy Carter's Woodworking, Painting and Poetry Reveal an Introspective Renaissance Man

(FILES) Former President Jimmy Carter waves to the crowd at the Democratic National Convention 2008 at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, on August 25, 2008. (Photo by Robyn BECK / AFP)
(FILES) Former President Jimmy Carter waves to the crowd at the Democratic National Convention 2008 at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, on August 25, 2008. (Photo by Robyn BECK / AFP)
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Jimmy Carter's Woodworking, Painting and Poetry Reveal an Introspective Renaissance Man

(FILES) Former President Jimmy Carter waves to the crowd at the Democratic National Convention 2008 at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, on August 25, 2008. (Photo by Robyn BECK / AFP)
(FILES) Former President Jimmy Carter waves to the crowd at the Democratic National Convention 2008 at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, on August 25, 2008. (Photo by Robyn BECK / AFP)

The world knew Jimmy Carter as a president and humanitarian, but he also was a woodworker, painter and poet, creating a body of artistic work that reflects deeply personal views of the global community — and himself.
His portfolio illuminates his closest relationships, his spartan sensibilities and his place in the evolution of American race relations. And it continues to improve the finances of The Carter Center, his enduring legacy, The Associated Press said.
Creating art provided “the rare opportunity for privacy” in his otherwise public life, Carter said. “These times of solitude are like being in another very pleasant world.”
‘One of the best gifts of my life' Mourners at Carter’s hometown funeral will see the altar cross he carved in maple and collection plates he turned on his lathe. Great-grandchildren in the front pews at Maranatha Baptist Church slept as infants in cradles he fashioned.
The former president measured himself a “fairly proficient” craftsman. Chris Bagby, an Atlanta woodworker whose shop Carter frequented, elevated that assessment to “rather accomplished.”
Carter gleaned the basics on his father’s farm, where the Great Depression meant being a jack-of-all-trades. He learned more in shop class and with Future Farmers of America. “I made a miniature of the White House,” he recalled, insisting it was not about his ambitions.
During his Navy years, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter chose unfurnished military housing to stretch his $300 monthly wage, and he built their furniture himself in a shop on base.
As president, Carter nurtured woodworking rather than his golf game, spending hours in a wood shop at Camp David to make small presents for family and friends. And when he left the White House, West Wing aides and Cabinet members pooled money for a shopping spree at Sears, Roebuck & Co. so he could finally assemble a full-scale home woodshop.
“One of the best gifts of my life,” Carter said.
Working in their converted garage, he previewed decades of Habitat for Humanity work by refurbishing their one-story house in Plains. He also improved his fine woodworking skills, joining wood without nails or screws. He also bought Japanese carving tools, and fashioned a chess set later owned by a Saudi prince.
Not just any customer Carter frequented Atlanta’s Highland Woodworking, a shop replete with a library of how-to books and hard-to-find tools, and recruited the world’s preeminent handmade furniture maker, Tage Frid, as an instructor, Bagby said.
Still hanging near the store entrance is a picture of Frid, who died in 2004, teaching students including a smiling former president at the front of the class.
“He was like a regular customer,” Bagby said, other than the “Secret Service agents who came with him.”
Carter built four ladder-back chairs out of hickory in 1983, and Sotheby’s auctioned them for $21,000 each at the time, the first of many sales of Carter paintings and furniture that raised millions to benefit The Carter Center.
It was rarely about the money, though. Jill Stuckey, a longtime friend who would have the Carters over to her home in Plains, recalled seeing the former president carrying out one of her chairs.
“I said, ‘What are you doing?’” she recalled. “He said, ‘It’s broken. I’m going to take it home and fix it.’”
He was at her back door at 7:30 the next morning, holding her repaired chair.
Carter compared woodworking to the results of his labor as a Navy engineer, or as a boy on the farm: “I like to see what I have done, what I have made.”
‘No special talent,' but his paintings drive auctions Carter employed a folk-art style as a late-in-life amateur painter and claimed “no special talent,” but a 2020 Carter Center auction drew $340,000 for his painting titled “Cardinals," and his oil-on-canvas of an eagle sold for $225,000 in 2023, months after he entered hospice care.
Carter’s work hangs throughout the center’s campus. A room where he met with dignitaries is encircled with birds he painted after he and Rosalynn took on bird watching as a hobby.
Near the executive offices are a self-portrait and a painting of Rosalynn in their early post-presidential years, hanging across from a trio of Andy Warhol prints showing Carter in office.
Carter’s earliest years predominate, with boyhood farm scenes and portraits of influential figures like his father James Earl Carter Sr., whose death in 1953 led him to abandon a Navy career and eventually enter politics in Georgia.
Some of his subjects, including both of his parents, are looking away. Carter's likeness of his mother shows “Miss Lillian” as a 70-year-old Peace Corps volunteer in India. Jason Carter said the piece was particularly meaningful to his grandfather, who lost reelection at a relatively youthful 56.
“When he got out of the White House, she was standing there saying, ’Well, I turned 70 in the Peace Corps. What are you going to do?” Jason Carter said.
One Carter subject who meets his gaze is a young Rosalynn — they married when she was 18 and he was 21. He described her as “remarkably beautiful, almost painfully shy, obviously intelligent, and yet unrestrained in our discussions.”
Another who doesn’t look away is Rachel Clark, a Black sharecropper who had hosted the future president after they worked in the fields. “Except for my parents, Rachel Clark was the person closest to me,” Carter wrote of his childhood.
'Just a word of praise' Carter wrote more than 30 books — even a novel — but was most introspective in poetry.
On his first real recognition of Jim Crow segregation: “A silent line was drawn between friend and friend, race and race.”
On his Cold War submarine’s delicate dance with enemies: “We wanted them to understand ... to share our love of solitude ... the peace we yearned to keep.”
Rosalynn’s smile, he gushed, silenced the birds, “or may be I failed to hear their song.”
Perhaps Carter’s most revealing poem, “I Wanted to Share My Father’s World,” concerns the man who never got to see his namesake son’s achievements. He wrote that he despised Earl’s discipline, and swallowed hunger for “just a word of praise.”
Only when he brought his own sons to visit his dying father did he “put aside the past resentments of the boy” and see “the father who will never cease to be alive in me.”