Beijing Zoo
She was caught in May 1955 in Baoxing, Sichuan, and moved to the Beijing Zoo in June. In May 1957, Kliment Voroshilov made a request for a panda for the Moscow Zoo during his visit to China, and she was sent to Moscow with another panda in the same month. However, the attempts to mate them were unsuccessful due to sexual imprinting as a result of being reared by human keepers. The Russians suspected that both pandas were male, and as a result, the Soviets returned Chi Chi to China in exchange for another panda in January 1958. In May of the same year, the Austrian animal broker, Heini Demmer, acquired Chi Chi from Beijing Zoo in exchange for an impressive collection of African hoofstock and brought the animal back to Moscow Zoo. After resting for a week, the panda journeyed to Tierpark Berlin, the zoo in East Berlin. By then, Chi Chi had already been sold to Brookfield Zoo in Illinois, United States. However, the Treasury Department stepped in and announced that the US trade embargo on goods from China extended even to pandas. Chi Chi was thus refused entry to the US.