The warm spring has brought with it a seasonal tourism boom across China, as visitors from home and aboard throng various tourist attractions to bask in the enchanting views of vibrant colors.
In the city of Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province, over 500,000 cherry trees are in full bloom, drawing visitors from near and far.
Wuhan University, one of the top spots for cherry blossom viewing, has seen a daily number of tourist visits exceeding 40,000.
"We're a family of three from Ma'anshan, Anhui. Beyond the cherry blossoms, I feel that the people here are open and warm-hearted," said Mr. Rong, a tourist.
East Lake Cherry Blossom Garden has also seen massive crowds, receiving over 400,000 visitor trips since its opening on March 6. In addition to cherry blossoms, the park also has cultural performances, including Chu Opera, to entertain the visitors.
Wuhan's new visa-free policy for foreign visitors has further boosted tourism, with foreign travelers at the local Tianhe Airport increasing by 160 percent compared to last year.
"I'm from Chile, and my wife is an Italian. We came here together to see the cherry blossoms. Wuhan has a unique culture and environment. It has water, cherry blossoms, and mountains. I really love it," said tourist Joaquin Couchot.
In Linqing City, located in east China's Shandong Province, thousands flocked to Tangyuan Town after the spring equinox -- marking the start of the spring season, which fell on March 20 this year -- to watch an expansive sea of apricot flowers. The 67-hectare farm with hundreds of century-old apricot trees also serve as a hub for showcasing cultural heritage, local food, and crafts, boosting jobs and the local economy as well.
"It feels amazing here and the weather is nice today. The beautiful flowers here are in full bloom. Just now I spent some time walking around with my friend and bought a lot of stuff. I'm looking forward to coming back in May to pick some apricots," said Ms. Jin, a tourist.
Meanwhile, in Hanshan County, Anhui in east China, an abandoned quarry has got a new lease on life after renovation and now hosts a sea of blooming rapeseed flowers spanning over 67 hectares.
"I've only seen rapeseed flowers in crop fields, but this is the first time I've seen them in a quarry. It's really a unique experience," said Ms. Song, another tourist.
The seasonal beauty, along with local food and crafts, has led to a surge in bookings for mountain lodges and increased sales of distinctive agricultural products, driving a "spring economy" across the country.
Spring blossoms fuel tourism boom across China
Honor's humanoid robot, Lightning, which swept the 2026 Beijing E-Town Humanoid Robot Half-Marathon on Sunday, is a natural extension of years of accumulation in consumer electronics technology, said its developers.
A leading smart device provider in China, Honor independently developed the model, which dominated the podium at the event as it was used by all three teams whose autonomous navigating robots ran the fastest times.
At the Honor factory in Pingshan District in Shenzhen City, south China's Guangdong Province, where robotics engineers developed Lightning. They said the robot's body design incorporates a simulation system that, through artificial intelligence algorithms, can iterate nearly 30,000 design schemes of varying sizes over three months. Complete and mature systems are also in place for battery, communication, and reliability verification.
"We built a simulation lab from scratch. For the robots, we digitize the entire design and put it into a computer. We have our own material library, which can meet the force, thermal, and chemical property demands for each component, under different environments and speeds. We've accumulated about 1000 kinds of materials. For example, if there's a risk with the robot's neck, we just need to change the material code from 001 to 002. Now, through our simulations, we only need one day to perform parallel calculations on 10 different designs, before creating a mold and verifying it in the lab," said Li Zheng, a senior engineer at Honor.
An autonomous robot capable of completing a half-marathon involves a complete industry chain, with core components including high-precision sensors, LiDAR, motors, operating systems, and control algorithms. The development of robotic marathoners have driven an increasing number of component enterprises to get involved.
Manifold, a tech firm established by newly-graduated PhDs, has developed a 3D spatial memory module, which can model an environment in real time and transform it into images that robots can understand. They said several robots running the half-marathon this year adopted their solution.
"Our device can operate within a one-kilometer tunnel with an error margin of only tens of centimeters. For robots, especially in the absence of GPS, this allows them to accurately determine their location. The underlying technology is a multi-sensor fusion technology that we developed in-house," said Qin Youming, CEO and founder of Manifold.
The Beijing Humanoid Robotics Innovation Center set up a training camp for the marathon event. Many university students came a month ahead of the event to develop and debug their technologies and algorithms based on open-source robot bodies, databases, and training platforms.
"These high-quality databases and highly open-source control algorithms are actually very helpful to us. We no longer need to build the house from the ground up, but can skip the most basic part," said Sun Jingyu, a student from Shandong University.
"Through this racing event, I believe we can make our robots more reliable and stable, while also supporting high-dynamic, high-load movements. This is crucial for robots' future application in both industrial, commercial and domestic scenarios," said Guo Yijie, head of the innovative humanoid department and the Marathon project of Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center.
Engineers share development story behind Beijing humanoid half-marathon champion model
