Two-year-old female panda Chun Yu, or "Spring Rain", was captured on video as she took a break from munching on bamboo to politely pat the head of her good friend Ji Fu, another young panda.
The footage captured in June shows Ji Fu preparing to join Chun Yu for a helping of bamboo. Ji Fu leans back lazily, bamboo shoot in hand, and makes eye contact with her meal companion, who then reaches out to deliver a few playful pats.
The pandas are currently residents of the Panpan Garden at the Dujiangyan base of the China Conservation and Research Center for Giant Pandas (CCRCGP) in Sichuan.
Chun Yu, born in August 2022, is the daughter of Qiao Qiao, a female giant panda rescued from the Mount Siguniang Scenic Area, making Chun Yu a second-generation member of wild panda lineage.
Ji Fu, also born in August 2022, is the daughter of panda Cui Cui. Weighing 270.4 grams at birth, Cui Cui holds the record as the heaviest baby panda born in captivity.
The CCRCGP is a world-leading institution for breeding and conserving one of China's national treasures. The center has also established a global platform for promoting international cooperation and exchanges involving 18 zoos from 16 countries and regions, 39 domestic animal breeding institutions, and more than 10 scientific research institutes.
Polite panda cub greets friend with gentle head pats
China's consumer market showed signs of robust recovery in the first quarter of 2025, driven by pro-consumption policies and heightened spending during the Chinese New Year holidays, according to the latest high-frequency data from the State Information Center (SIC).
The SIC's offline consumption index, a key gauge of brick-and-mortar retail activity, surged by 14.2 percent year on year in Q1, against the 9.1 percent rise in the previous quarter.
Momentum strengthened further in March, with growth of the index hitting 20 percent -- up 4.7 percentage points from the January-February period.
The offline consumption index for China's first-tier cities, second-tier cities, third-tier cities and below saw year-on-year growth of 19.6 percent, 11.4 percent and 20.2 percent, respectively.
The small commodity market heat index, tracking sales of household goods and daily essentials, jumped 16.3 percent in Q1, with March alone seeing a 21.6 percent spike.
The figures underscore resilient demand for affordable, high-frequency consumer items, signaling a broader recovery in grassroots economic activity.
The country's service sector saw a notable expansion as well, with the life services consumption heat index climbing 18.3 percent in the first quarter - 7.4 percentage points higher from the last quarter of 2024.
Among them, the leisure and dining sectors saw growth of 67.6 percent and 14.5 percent respectively.
Online searches for the Qingming Festival travel and spring outing destinations -- including keywords like "cherry blossom spots" and "hiking trails" -- skyrocketed over 400 percent in March, the SIC's internet monitoring data revealed.
China's consumer market gains momentum in Q1
