The first giant panda to have been born in France received an emotional send-off on Tuesday as he left his French zoo ahead of the long haul flight back to his ancestral China.
Yuan Meng, who was born in 2017 in the Beauval zoo in the Loire region of France, was cheered by visitors and zoo staff as he was driven under police escort to Charles de Gaulle airport for a 12 hour China Airlines flight to the Chinese city of Chengdu.
"He can now continue to live his good life. It's inevitably a moment of emotion, but all our animals born here are forced to leave one day. We're used to that," he added.Hundreds of fans of the black and white bear braved morning rain to bid farewell to the winsome ursine. China has long deployed so-called panda diplomacy with friends and even foes ranging from the US to Taiwan, gifting the animals to various countries, often to further its foreign policy aims.
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