China's tourism industry has seen strong demand from international travelers during the five-day Labor Day holiday ending Sunday.
Official data shows that the country's inbound travel bookings during the May Day holiday increased by 130 percent year-on-year.
One of the popular tourist destinations has been Leshan City in southwest China's Sichuan Province. It is home to the 71-meter-tall Leshan Giant Buddha, which was carved out of a hillside in the 8th century and looks down on the confluence of three rivers.
A Czech tour group took a cruise to catch a glimpse of the majestic millennium-old grotto relics.
"Actually I have seen some photos already before, but it really is much more beautiful. It was amazing. Yes, I really liked it," said Maria, one of the Czech tourists.
In east China's Zhejiang Province, groups of overseas holidaymakers have also been flocking to Shizhuang Village to explore the local culture and ancient architecture.
"I like the wicker ball. It's good fun. I enjoyed it a lot. Beautiful, it really is. It's fantastic. I love all the old buildings in the mountains. It's amazing," said Robbie Alexander, a British tourist.
Beijing's Temple of Heaven welcomed some British tourists who donned traditional Chinese costumes, with the eldest among them aged more than 80.
The Temple of Heaven, founded in the first half of the 15th century, is a place where emperors of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) worshipped heaven for bumper harvests.
China's inbound tourism up 130 pct during Labor Day holiday
Chinese scientists announced Monday that they have achieved a breakthrough in yak cloning, with 10 cloned calves all naturally delivered in southwest China's Xizang Autonomous Region.
These calves, consisting of three black yaks and seven white ones, were born from March 25 to April 5 at a yak breeding and research base in Xizang's Damxung County, all meeting expected standards and steadily gaining weight.
The mass births came after the first cloned yak was born in July 2025, which has grown healthily and weighs about 183 kg now.
The achievement was made using a domestically developed breeding system that combines whole-genome selection with somatic cell cloning, following three years of research by a Chinese scientific team.
"Whole-genome selection can accurately pinpoint excellent genetic loci associated with large body size, fast growth, strong fecundity and disease resistance, high feed conversion efficiency, and tolerance to high-altitude and low-oxygen conditions (cold resistance). On this basis, somatic cell cloning enables 1:1 precise replication of the genotype through asexual rapid propagation (cloning), thereby compressing the breeding cycle to within five years," said Fang Shengguo, a professor at the College of Life Sciences at Zhejiang University and director of the State Conservation Center for Gene Resources of Endangered Wildlife.
Yak farming is one of the key industries targeted for development in Xizang during the country's 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030). Traditional yak breeding has relied on phenotype selection, a process that can take up to 20 years and often leads to declining genetic quality.
Researchers said the new method can shorten the breeding cycle to less than five years by accurately identifying desirable genetic traits such as faster growth, disease resistance, feed efficiency and adaptation to high-altitude, low-oxygen environments, while enabling rapid replication of elite breeding stock.
Experts added that the technology could also support conservation efforts for rare yak genetic resources, including the endangered golden wild yak, whose population in Xizang is estimated at more than 300.
So far, the research team has developed more than 200 cloned embryos of golden wild yaks and hybrid wild-blood yaks, laying the groundwork for future embryo transfer and species recovery programs.
China achieves large-scale births of cloned yaks
