Japan bids farewell to beloved pandas as they head back to China

Tokyo:

Thousands of Japanese fans bid farewell on Sunday to four beloved pandas who will return to China this week, with some visitors in tears.

Visitors flock to Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo for a last glimpse of Xiang Xiang, who has been a massive attraction for the park since his birth in 2017, and for the other three pandas at a park in the western Wakayama region.

In Tokyo, the last viewing of Xiang Xiang, the zoo’s first baby panda since 1988, was limited to 2,600 visitors who won a lucky lottery ticket, but some fans who didn’t still came.

“I wanted to breathe the same air,” as Jiang Jiang, Mari Asai told the Asahi Shimbun daily.

“Knowing that even though I can’t see him, it fills my heart with joy,” the 48-year-old said.

Another visitor tearfully told local media that she wanted to get closer to the five-year-old panda.

“Everything about him is adorable, whether asleep or awake,” she said.

The Ueno Zoo receives calls and emails every day from panda fans asking it to keep Xiang Xiang, the Tokyo Shimbun daily reported, citing a zoo official.

The panda was initially set to sail to China in 2021, but its departure was postponed several times due to travel restrictions linked to the pandemic.

In Wakayama, visitors came to say goodbye to Emi, who in 2020 became the world’s oldest man to father a baby panda at age 28, the first to be a human in his 80s, as well as to his twin daughters. Is equal to.

“Everyone is so lovely I almost cried,” a woman in her 70s told public broadcaster NHK.

“I’m sorry they’re going back to China.”

The black and white mammals are hugely popular around the world and China loans them out as part of a “panda diplomacy” program to boost foreign relations.

According to the environmental group WWF, there are an estimated 1,860 giant pandas left in the wild, mainly in bamboo forests in the mountains of China.

There are about 600 in captivity in panda centers, zoos and wildlife parks around the world.