Trends: Xiang Xiang's last day at the Ueno Zoo

People look at the female giant panda cub Xiang Xiang at Ueno Zoo in Tokyo, Japan on Tuesday, the first day of its re-opening after nearly a four-month closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo: AFP

Sunday was female giant panda Xiang Xiang's last day at the Ueno Zoo in Japan as she will return to China on Tuesday. 

Recently, there have been long lines in front of the zoo every day as numerous people in Tokyo came to bid farewell to the panda. Xiang Xiang is hugely popular in Japan. Sometimes people have to wait three to four hours to have a look at her.

Xiang Xiang born in June 2017, was originally supposed to return to China at the end of December 2020, but that plan was postponed due to the pandemic.

People's Daily


Recently, the government of Shenyang in Northeast China's Liaoning Province decided to give out a monthly childcare subsidy of 500 yuan ($73) to families with a third child until the child reaches 3 years of age. 

According to statistics, the natural population growth rate was -0.333 percent in Shenyang in 2021.

In July 2021, China released a decision allowing a couple to have three children and rolled out a slew of support measures, ranging from tax breaks to more nurseries and flexible work leave to encourage births.

The Paper


In a video to promote the new movie Ping Pong: The Triumph, table tennis legend Liu Guoliang, current president of the Chinese Table Tennis Association, says, "The decades-long enduring glory of Chinese table tennis has been the result of the efforts of several generations."

The movie, which hit the theaters on Friday, was inspired by the true stories of the Chinese national team. In the early 1990s, when the Chinese men's table tennis team was at a low ebb, a new head coach was tasked with forming a new team to finally fight to the top at the 1995 World Championship in Tianjin, China.

Sina Video