Panda keeper Mariel Lally squatted on one side of the metal enclosure with a container of carrots. On the other side, 3-year-old giant panda Qing Bao sat on the ground, gripping the wire mesh with her claws and eying the container.

Lally selected a carrot. As she pushed it through the mesh, Qing Bao grabbed it with her mouth and, rather loudly, devoured it. “I don’t like the sound of people eating,” Lally said. “But I really miss the sound of a panda crunching on a carrot.”

That sound had been absent from the Smithsonian’s National Zoo for almost a year, until Qing Bao and her male companion, Bao Li, also 3, arrived from China on Oct. 15.

Now the gnawing has resumed, and the animals are being readied for their gala debut - and a fresh wave of Washington pandamania - on Jan. 24.

“Bao Li and Qing Bao have already won the hearts of our staff and volunteers,” the zoo’s director, Brandie Smith, said in a statement. “And we are excited to welcome panda fans back.”

In recent days, the zoo has been preparing the bears for their exposure to crowds, allowing small groups into the panda compound for previews. One day last week, a group of local veterinary professionals as well as two journalists got an early look.

On the chilly morning, panda keeper Lally was putting Qing Bao (ching-BOW) through some training exercises, continuing to teach the bear to respond to her hand and voice signals. The training will help the pandas participate in minor medical procedures, such as blood draws.

She spread a thumb and forefinger to get Qing Bao to open her mouth.

“Let’s see if she’ll do this,” Lally said.

Qing Bao did.

“Good!” Lally said.

In went a carrot.

Lally pressed a knuckle against the mesh to ask the animal to touch it with her nose.

Qing Bao put up a paw.

“No, your nose,” Lally said.

The panda put her nose to the mesh.

“Good girl!”

Qing Bao got another carrot.

Lally has worked with other pandas at the National Zoo, but she said helping the young bears acclimate to their new home has been a special experience. She flew with other zoo experts on the FedEx cargo plane that brought the pair from China in the fall.

The black-and-white bears have replaced the zoo’s last giant pandas, Mei Xiang, 26, a female; Tian Tian, 27, a male; and their male offspring, Xiao Qi Ji, 4.

“It’s been a really awesome opportunity, to say the least,” Lally said. “When I started, Mei Xiang and Tian Tian were already in their teens. These ones are only three.

“So what we see now is not what they’re going to be in the next couple of years,” she said. “They’re still subadults. So that means that their personalities are going to change over the next few years.

“There are still some things about them that are very cub-like,” she said.

The two pandas have been brought to the zoo, in part, to breed, though those efforts are still years away.

Although giant pandas don’t reach sexual maturity until they are about 5 to 7 years of age, “we’re starting to see the first instances of hormones with them,” she said. “So it’s kind of like having somebody who is going through puberty around.”

The male, Bao Li, a grandson of Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, has done scent marking and a little “power walking,” she said. “We say he looks like a panda with a purpose. He’s looking for the ladies.”

And while they are in separate yards, and generally solitary, Bao Li and Qing Bao have spent more time than usual looking at each other through windows in their enclosures, Lally said.

“It’s a lot of fun, a little bit challenging, but lots of fun,” she said. “I think the public, they’re going to love them.”

The zoo said free entry passes for all visitors and paid parking passes for Jan. 24 can be reserved through its website.

The upgraded 40-camera pandacam system will restart operations that day, too, zoo spokeswoman Annalisa Meyer said.

(Meanwhile, the zoo has posted videos of the pandas cavorting in Monday’s snow.)

“These two bears are beautiful,” Meyer said. “They’re really beautiful.”

Members of the zoo, who pay an annual fee for special benefits, are eligible to get VIP glimpses Friday through Jan. 19. Members are required to reserve free timed-entry passes to participate.

It has been over a year since Washingtonians and visitors have been able to glimpse giant pandas at the zoo.

Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and Xiao Qi Ji were taken to China, by prior agreement, on Nov. 8, 2023. China now owns and leases giant pandas in U.S. zoos. The National Zoo has had four adult giant pandas and four cubs since the first giant pandas arrived in 1972.

Qing Bao and Bao Li (BOW-lee) are here on a 10-year lease, ending in April 2034, during which the zoo will pay $1 million per year to the China Wildlife Conservation Association.

Giant panda breeding in captivity can be difficult. Mei Xiang and Tian Tian were never able to breed naturally. Their cubs were all the result of artificial insemination, the zoo has said.

With the new pandas, “we are going to try natural breeding when we are able to have them together and they’re of age,” Lally said. Zoo veterinarian James Steeil said: “They’re really doing great. They have adjusted remarkably well. They’re learning all our routines, and we’re learning them.”

“Bao Li likes people a lot,” Steeil said. “So he likes to vocalize towards people.”

Giant pandas “make bleats and whistles … and then they also will honk at times, but that’s usually out of distress and anger,” he said. “He has never done that here. So mostly it’s bleats and whistles when he’s excited and happy.”

Qing Bao is independent, Lally said.

“She actually lived with two other giant pandas before she came here,” she said. “I saw videos of her in China. She was always trying to put the boys she lived with in their place. She’s a little bit on the sassy side.”

As few as 1,864 giant pandas live in the wild, the zoo says on its website. Another 600 live in zoos and breeding centers around the world.

In 2016, the International Union for Conservation of Nature said that the giant panda’s status had improved to “vulnerable” from “endangered” on the list of species at risk of extinction.