 Washington bid farewell to its beloved trio of giant pandas on Wednesday as the long-serving Goodwill Ambassadors to the US Capitol departed Dulles International Airport for a 19-hour journey to China, the bears, Macyang, TianTian, and their cub-shou chi ji hunkered down in crates made of steel and plexiglass that were lifted into a truck and then loaded into a Boeing 777F cargo plane dubbed FedEx Panda Express. The pandas, accompanied by three zookeepers, were en route to a reserve in China's mountainous Sichuan province, where an estimated 1,800 pandas are still found in the wild, according to the Smithsonian National Zoo. The trio, made famous by the zoo's giant panda cam with more than 100 million views, were part of a fading legacy in which giant pandas served as animal ambassadors.