Lift-off from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in 2021. | Photo: STR/AFP/Keystone

During the last spring holidays, China’s domestic tourists didn’t travel en masse to lovely seaside resorts but to the Wenchang Space Launch Site on the southern island province of Hainan instead. That’s where the lunar probe Chang’e 6 was launched on 3 May 2024 – an event attended by some 80,000 people. According to China’s state-run English-language news channel CGTN, the people who had flocked to the nearby Qishuiwan beach were also more interested in taking their photos in front of models of the rocket and moon than they were in sun, sea or sand. Even the world’s biggest, most sensitive radio telescope, known as China’s ‘Sky eye’, was a draw for holidaymakers from home and abroad in the early summer. In recent years, according to CGTN, “China has made significant technological breakthroughs, and many places associated with big moments in science fields have become landmark buildings”.