Shenzhou-23 crew sends Mid-Autumn Festival wishes from space

The Shenzhou-23 crew aboard China's Tiangong space station sent heartfelt Mid-Autumn Festival greetings via video from 400 kilometers above Earth on Friday.

This marks the fourth Mid-Autumn Festival celebrated aboard Tiangong since the completion of China's space station.

"Right now, we're celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival at China's space station. We miss our families all the more on each festival day. Though the Earth is far away, our hearts are always beating in sync with our motherland and closely connected with the people of our country," said the commander Zhu Yangzhu.

Zhu, who is now on his second space journey, and is the first commander among China's third batch of astronauts. This also marks the second time that he is spending the Mid-Autumn Festival in space.

"Carrying out the mission in space means we miss out on the warmth of family reunion, yet we gain more perseverance from sticking together as a team. Dear family members, if you see a shining 'star' streaking across the night sky, that is Tiangong, and that is me missing you," said astronaut Zhang Zhiyuan, who is undertaking his first space flight journey.

The Mid-Autumn Festival, or the Moon Festival, is one of the most important traditional Chinese festivals, for family reunion and happiness with the full moon.

Lai Ka-ying is the country's first astronaut from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, also the first payload expert flying into space among the fourth batch of astronauts.

"This is a special Mid-Autumn Festival. Through the porthole, what I miss most is the lights of thousands of homes across China, and what I yearn for most is the full moon that illuminates Hong Kong. Gazing at the bright moon in the skies, we share the beauty of the moon even though we are thousands of miles apart. At this moment, we yearn for it even more," she said.

The three astronauts were launched aboard the Shenzhou-23 spacecraft on May 24 this year, and then entered the space station Tiangong on May 25. To date, they have been working in orbit for four months.

"May our great motherland be prosperous and strong, and may our people be at peace. Wishing everyone a happy Mid-Autumn Festival and a happy family," said the three astronauts in the video from the space.

Shenzhou-23 crew sends Mid-Autumn Festival wishes from space

Shenzhou-23 crew sends Mid-Autumn Festival wishes from space

People from different walks of life in the United States have stressed the global significance of Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit, expressing hopes that the visit will strengthen bilateral cooperation across various sectors.

Xi arrived in the United States on Wednesday to begin a three-day state visit at the invitation of U.S. President Donald Trump. It comes after Trump paid a state visit to China in May, which marked the first by a U.S. president in nearly nine years.

"I think these have been unique spectacles and these are historical moments which will reverberate, I mean years and decades later where the two are partners, not rivals and should see that relationship in that context and whether the two sides should coexist with each other," said Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies.

"You know, these are the two largest and most important countries in the world, geopolitically, economically, so virtually anything these two countries do with each other, it's going to have an impact on the people," said Dan McClory, a U.S. international investor.

Many Americans also noted that Xi's visit will create more opportunities to foster people-to-people exchanges between the two countries and further enhance mutual trust.

"What we need is a really firm base of understanding and that's what person-to-person kinds of relationships happen, that's what they bring. And I believe that they also promote trade, to be honest," said Michael Dembrow, former Senate member of Oregon.

"The announcement that President Xi made of inviting 100,000 youngsters to China, I think is a very welcome one. I would like to see also that the U.S. be a little bit more welcoming in terms of Chinese scholars, academics and students. The hope is that as U.S.-China relations ease and settle into a more coexistent framework that it will also encourage people to go across and see each other first hand and that would be, as I said, the most important stabilizing ballast in the relationship," said Gupta.

Xi said 100,000 young Americans will be invited to visit China for exchanges and study over the next five years on Thursday morning while attending a welcome ceremony held by Trump at the White House.

US experts, officials hail significance of Xi's visit, call for closer cooperation