Giant panda found wandering the streets of China's Sichuan Province

A giant panda made a surprise visit to Wenchuan county in southwest China's Sichuan Province on Thursday (31 MAY 2018), wandering around the village.

China's state broadcaster CCTV showed the panda roaming through the village and exploring a vegetable garden before finding its way into the woods.

Researchers at the China Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda told CCTV that the panda was 11-year-old female Zhenzhen, who was born in 2007 at the San Diego Zoo in the US and was returned to China in 2010.

She had been raised in captivity since then and was recently released into the wild on March 5 as part of a special breeding project.

Researchers hoped that Zhenzhen could mate with wild pandas - a major mission of the breeding project, according to the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda.

After hours of exploration in the village, Zhenzhen was captured and taken back to the research center.