First giant panda born in France says farewell and heads to China

Yuan Meng in his enclosure at the Beauval zoo on the eve of his departure for Chengdu in Southwest China. AFP - GUILLAUME SOUVANT

The first giant panda cub born in France has returned to his ancestral China after an emotional send-off from his French zoo on Tuesday.

Yuan Meng was cheered by visitors and zoo staff as he was driven under police escort to Charles de Gaulle airport for a 12-hour flight to the Chinese city of Chengdu.

Trained for several days to get ready for the trip, the son of Yuan Zi and Huan Huan – the first pandas loaned to France by the Chinese authorities in 2012 – climbed into his specially designed crate filled with bamboo.

🐼 🇫🇷 Bon voyage #YuanMeng 🚛
Le premier #panda né sur le sol français vient de partir du @zoobeauval direction l’aéroport de Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle d’où il s’envolera aux alentours de 17h pour #Chengdu. https://t.co/QYVgSCHpvu pic.twitter.com/CxZOuZFXDM

— www.panda.fr (@pandas_fr) July 25, 2023

A final ‘bambo-eating goodbye ceremony’ had been held at the zoo on Monday.

"We have been getting him used to going in and out and sleeping in it, over the past weeks, Rodolphe Delord, the zoo’s director, told FranceInfo online.

“Everything went well. He said goodbye to his parents and his sisters, with tears in the eyes of his keepers," said Delord.

"He can now continue to live his good life. It's inevitably an emotional moment, but all our animals born here are forced to leave one day. We're used to it," he added.

Presidential send-off

The panda was given a final farewell on the tarmac by French first lady Brigitte Macron, the panda’s godmother and who attended his baptism in 2018.

French first lady Brigitte Macron bid farewell to Yuan Meng at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris on Tuesday afternoon shortly before the first giant #panda born in France took off on a 12-hour flight to Chengdu, Sichuan province, to join a panda breeding and conservation… https://t.co/cXCEkXtQSU pic.twitter.com/FWSCUFPYFB

— China Daily (@ChinaDaily) July 26, 2023

Yuan Meng, whose name means “the accomplishment of a dream” was born in August 2017 at the Beauval Zoo in Saint-Aignan, conceived through artificial insemination.

He made his first public appearance on 13 January 2018. His twin-brother died barely two hours after birth.

Back in China, he will be transferred to the Chengdu giant panda reproductive centre, where he will be mated with a female panda with whom he has no biological link so as to preserve the “genetic diversity of the species”, Delord said.

Yuan Meng, pictured with Rodolphe Delord and Brigitte Macron in 2017, looked decidedly more interested in bamboo than France's first lady. © GUILLAUME SOUVANT / AFP

China has long deployed so-called panda diplomacy with friends and even foes ranging from the United States to Taiwan, gifting the animals to various countries, often to further its foreign policy aims.

But all giant pandas officially belong to China, including those born abroad. Beijing simply loans them to foreign zoos, which must usually return any offspring within a few years of their birth to join the country's breeding programme.

Beauval says it has been allowed to keep Yuan Meng’s parents until 2027.

Since Yuan Meng's birth, two other pandas have been born in Beauval zoo – twins Huanlili and Yuandudu, in August 2021.

There are an estimated 1,860 giant pandas left in the wild, mainly in bamboo forests in the Sichuan mountains of China, according to environmental group WWF.

About 600 are in captivity in panda centres, zoos and wildlife parks around the world.