Male Panda Yuan Zi is lying in his internal enclosure before his last public snack at the Beauval Zoo in Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, central France, on November 23, 2025. GUILLAUME SOUVANT / AFP
China will send new giant pandas to France, a Chinese embassy official said, as an elderly pair was set to fly back home from Paris on Tuesday, November 25. "Rest assured, French friends, new giant pandas will arrive in the future," said Chen Dong, as he waited for the bears, both aged 17, to take off from Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport.
Huan Huan and her partner Yuan Zi arrived at the Beauval Zoo in 2012 as part of China's "panda diplomacy" program, which sees the black-and-white bears dispatched across the globe as soft-power ambassadors. The two pandas were meant to stay in France until January 2027, but female panda Huan Huan was diagnosed with kidney failure.
The pair were loaded onto a truck bound for a Paris airport, each in their own box with a glass window dotted with ventilation holes, with the words "Bon voyage" and their name inscribed on the side.
More than 200 well-wishers braved a cold and rainy Sunday to say farewell, including one couple dressed head-to-toe in panda-themed gear, who say they have visited the bears "more than a thousand times" since their arrival in 2012.
