While the Atlanta Zoo mourns the loss of its four giant pandas, the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. is excitedly anticipating the arrival of two beloved black-and-white bears.

The two pandas destined for the U.S. capital were set to leave Chengdu in China’s Sichuan province on Monday night as part of a 10-year loan agreement that came together more quickly than anticipated.

The male panda, Bao Li, and the female, Qing Bao, both aged 3, will take the place of the previous resident pandas at the National Zoo, who had been there for 24 years. Those pandas and their cub were returned to China last November when their lease expired. This marked the first time since the start of “Panda diplomacy” in 1972 that the zoo had no pandas at all.

Although rising tensions between the U.S. and China seemed to jeopardize the panda program, San Diego recently welcomed two new pandas from China in August, and San Francisco is also set to receive two next year.

The China Wildlife Conservation Association, in a statement about the journey of Bao Li and Qing Bao, expressed hope that this collaboration for panda conservation would “further contribute to global biodiversity conservation and strengthen the ties between our two nations.”

The two pandas will travel aboard a FedEx cargo plane appropriately named the “Panda Express,” which is the same type of plane that transported the Atlanta Zoo’s four pandas back to China over the weekend.

Lun Lun and Yang Yang, the Atlanta pandas who had been residing there since 1999, completed their 25-year stay and returned with their youngest cubs, twins born in 2016, after their earlier five cubs were sent to the Chengdu Research Center for Panda Breeding. According to the agreement, China maintains custody of the adult pandas and any offspring.

Zoo Atlanta reports that fewer than 1,900 giant pandas remain in the wild in China, primarily due to habitat loss and fragmentation. Although listed as at risk, their status was upgraded from “endangered” to “vulnerable” in 2016 as their population increased by nearly 17% in the prior decade.

“The pandas have had a unique impact on Atlanta’s cultural landscape,” remarked Raymond King, the zoo’s President and CEO. “Their exit is bittersweet for Zoo Atlanta and the Panda Care Team, as well as for the public who have enjoyed and learned from the pandas over the years.”

Visitors to the Washington zoo will need to wait over a month to see the new pandas, as they will first go through a quarantine period to help them adjust to their new environment.

This waiting period is much shorter than initially expected by zoo Director Brandie Smith after witnessing the departure of the pandas 11 months ago.

“I always believed the pandas would come back,” she shared with the Washington Post earlier this month. “However, if you had asked me last year how long it would take… I would have predicted we would need to wait several years.”