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.