Beloved giant pandas in Japan to return to China

China

Beloved giant pandas in Japan to return to China

2025-06-27 17:30 Last Updated At：06-28 00:27

All four giant pandas on loan to a theme park in the western Japanese prefecture of Wakayama will return to China on Saturday and a large number of panda fans have come to bid farewell to their beloved pandas.

In April, the Adventure World amusement park in Shirahama, Wakayama prefecture, announced that the 24-year-old Rauhin and her three daughters, 8-year-old Yuihin, 6-year-old Saihin and 4-year-old Fuhin, will leave for their new home at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in China's Sichuan Province.

Since the announcement of the pandas' departure, scheduled for June 28, the park has attracted flocks of tourists every day.

Before the park opened on Friday, around 1,400 fans from all over Japan were already lined up.

"I traveled from Kochi Prefecture yesterday and waited two hours to enter Adventure World amusement park. After that, I waited another 30 minutes to see Rauhin and Saihin at the breeding center. But I think the wait was worth it. They are so adorable, very healing, and filled me with energy," said a tourist.

"I'm really happy to see them. Although I'm excited, it's a bit sad to think that they'll be leaving. Still, I feel so lucky to have had the chance to see them," said another tourist.

Adventure World began a breeding cooperation program with the Chinese panda research base in 1994 and was home to Eimei, a special envoy for Sino-Japan friendship who came to Japan on loan in 1994. Under the joint conservation project, 17 giant pandas were born in the Wakayama park over three decades.

Many people hope that these four giant pandas will live a healthy and happy life after returning to China.

"When I saw the mother panda moving, I felt like she understood everything. This made me both happy and sad. I can't help but wish even more that she will live a healthy life after returning to China," said a tourist.

As scheduled, the four giant pandas will be loaded into transport vehicles on Saturday morning and will depart from Kansai International Airport in Japan, flying to Sichuan, China.

China launches Shenzhou-23 manned spaceship

China's Shenzhou-23 crewed spaceship blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the country's northwest on Sunday, sending three astronauts to its orbiting space station.

The spaceship, atop a Long March-2F carrier rocket, lifted off from the launch site at 23:08 Beijing Time (15:08 GMT).

The crew members consist of mission commander Zhu Yangzhu, and fellow astronauts Zhang Zhiyuan and Lai Ka-ying, who is also the first astronaut from China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

In another notable first, one of the crew members is set to undertake a year-long stay aboard the space station, double the usual duration of previous Shenzhou missions.

After entering orbit, the Shenzhou-23 spaceship will perform a fast automated rendezvous and docking with the radial port of the space station core module Tianhe, forming a combination of three modules and three spacecraft.

Shenzhou-23 marks the 40th flight of China's manned spaceflight program and the seventh manned flight mission since the Tiangong space station entered its application and development phase in late 2022.