The National Zoo’s three giant pandas — Tian Tian, Mei Xiang and Xiao Qi Ji — left Washington, D.C., early Wednesday and were taken to Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia, where they were boarded onto the specially equipped Boeing FedEx Panda Express to begin their long trans-Pacific flight to Chengdu, China, their new home.

According to the zoo, the pandas are traveling with approximately 220 pounds of bamboo, 8 pounds of leaf-eater biscuits, 5 pounds of low-starch biscuits, 6 pounds of apples, 5 pounds of carrots, 6 pounds of sweet potatoes, 3 pounds of sugar cane, 1 pound of pears and 1 pound of cooked squash for the 19-hour flight, which will include a refueling stop in Anchorage, Alaska.

Speaking outside an empty panda enclosure, National Zoo director Brandie Smith called it a “hard morning.”

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It’s the first time in 23 years the zoo has been without pandas, which have been a fixture there since 1972, when China gifted two pandas to the National Zoo as a gesture of goodwill during President Richard Nixon’s administration.

Since then, zoos across the country have hosted giant pandas for years at a time. But that practice is coming to an end.

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