Three-year-old bears Qing Bao and Bao Li can be seen on the zoo’s ‘giant panda cam’ after arriving in US in October

Two new giant pandas made their public debut at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington DC on Friday morning amid growing excitement about newcomers to the nation’s capital, quickly dubbed by some media outlets as “pandamonium”.

The three-year-old pandas, Qing Bao, whose name means “green treasure” in Mandarin, and Bao Li, whose name means “active and vital power”, arrived in the US from China last October, making them the first pandas to come to DC from China in 24 years, but have been in quarantine since.

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© Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

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© Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Panda fan culture once flourished in China. But Beijing is tightening control of discussion of a national symbol.

© The New York Times