Crowd of visitors for a little panda: Singapore says goodbye to Le Le During dinner with a billionaire: Trump talks about secret nuclear submarines

Singapore is preparing to say goodbye to one of its animal favorites: the little panda Le Le will return to China in December. But the bundle of joy still attracts countless visitors to the zoo in the Southeast Asian city-state who want to see him play and romp again with his mother Jia Jia. Le Le and his parents have a large, pleasantly air-conditioned enclosure in the River Wonders wildlife park, which is adjacent to the Singapore Zoo, with its own small waterfall and lots of trees ideal for climbing.

Born on August 14, 2021, Le Le was the first baby panda ever born in Singapore. His parents Jia Jia and Kai Kai have been living in Singapore on loan from China since 2012, but had tried in vain to have children for years. When it finally worked, even Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong cheered: “It is well known that it is difficult for pandas to reproduce in captivity,” he wrote at the time. “This is the seventh attempt for Kai Kai and Jia Jia. Her caregivers deserve much credit for this difficult and rare achievement and for persevering despite previous failures.”

From then on, every development step was meticulously monitored: how the panda opened its eyes for the first time after 40 days, more than doubled its weight in a month, and after 138 days was baptized Le Le – Cantonese for ‘smart’. The next day, the adorable panda child was presented to the public for the first time and has been melting the hearts of citizens and tourists ever since.

Visitors can marvel at it until November 20, when Le Le goes into quarantine before the big trip. It is common for panda loan babies to be brought to China when they are two years old. Then they broke away from their mother. In China, Le Le will “fulfill the important mission of contributing to the conservation of giant pandas,” the zoo said in a statement.

Pandas are considered symbols of friendship between China and the countries to which they are loaned. There has been talk of ‘panda diplomacy’ for years, although the animals always remain on loan – and that also applies to their offspring. (rbu/sda/dpa)