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Han Ximinximhan@126.com

A CHINA Southern Airlines fl ight left the Shenzhen airport at 7:05 p.m. Thursday, marking the opening of the second air route to Australia from Shenzhen.

The fl ight was scheduled to arrive in Melbourne at 6:20 a.m. (local time) Friday. The return fl ight will leave the Australian city at 8 a.m. and arrive in Shenzhen at 3:35 p.m. the following day.

In June, the fl ight will operate every Thursday and Saturday. Starting from July, it will oper-ate every Monday, Thursday and Saturday.

China Southern Airlines launched intercontinental routes from Shenzhen with fl ights to Sydney and Dubai in January 2016. At the opening ceremony Thursday, Liu Guojun, general manager with the Shenzhen company of China Southern Airlines said that the route would be complimentary with the one to Sydney and other routes from Guangzhou to Australia and that it would expand the air network infl uence of Australian cities.

“Half of the mainland travelers to Sydney take fl ights departing from Shenzhen. The fl ights to Melbourne will play a similar role by attracting and trans-porting inland city travelers to Australia,” Liu said.

At the opening ceremony, Andy Jiang, country manager for China of Tourism Australia, said 1.23 million Chinese had visited Australia over the past 12 months, contributing AU$10 billion (US$7.41 million) and accounting for one quarter of total tourism consumption by travelers to Australia.

Among the mainland trav-elers, 15 percent come from Guangdong and half of them visit Melbourne, the capital of Victoria State and the second largest city in Australia.

The Shenzhen company is now operating 13 international routes from Shenzhen including fi ve routes that were opened since January last year. Liu said that the company will open a route to Moscow this year.

China Southern Airlines had opened seven routes to cities in Oceania, including Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, Auckland, Christchurch and Adelaide by the end of 2016.

With the opening of more international routes, the number of international travelers contin-ues to increase. Between January and April, the Shenzhen airport handled 1.14 million international travelers, an increase of 21.7 per-cent over the same period last year. The Shenzhen airport is now operating seven intercontinen-tal routes and 29 international routes, according to Luo Yude, general manager with Shenzhen Airport Group Co. Ltd.

Zhang Qianzhqcindy@163.com

OVERWHELMED by excite-ment, dozens of elderly people and children, representing the residents at the Shenzhen Social Welfare Center, cel-ebrated Thursday as they were moving into their new home in Guanlan, Longhua District.

With a much larger space than the old social welfare center, the new site in Guanlan is going to provide around 700 vacancies for orphans and 300 beds for the elderly.

Built in 1992, the old social welfare center, located in Meilin, Futian District, hardly meets the demand of orphans and the increasing number of the seniors who apply to stay there.

A woman in her late 70s at the center told Shenzhen Daily that the staff had already helped them move some of their belong-ings to the new home, but they are still waiting for the exact date to move.

“We have been applying for a larger venue to house the elderly and the children for many years and we are so glad that we will move into the large center soon,” said Zhang Bin, head of Shen-zhen Social Welfare Center.

Zhang said that the old social welfare center will continue to be used to accommodate handi-capped adult orphans who can hardly earn a living on their own. The center’s staff call this special group of people “big kids” as they are adults, but still need people to take care of them.

Like the old center, the new site is comprised of three areas: a nursery home, a children’s home and a health-care center between the two areas. Residents of the social welfare center are seen by doctors there for minor illness, but still need to be transferred to larger hospitals if they are severely sick.

Inside of the children’s home,

Airline opens flight to Melbourne

City’s welfare center moves to new site

35 units of three-bedroom apart-ments, each covering an area of nearly 100 square meters, have been decorated as normal homes where three to four orphans live in their simulated family.

In a simulated family, a real couple is employed by the social welfare center to take care of three to four orphans or chil-dren whose parents are behind bars and cannot raise them. The family will live together for years until the kids grow up and leave the home.

Like normal families, the chil-dren will attend a school located inside the center when they reach school age. However, the wives are required to be stay-at-home

mothers to take care of all the children in their simulated fami-lies. The husbands can work and earn money, but the center also pays salaries to the couples.

“We fi nd that our children are more adaptable to society if they live in simulated families compared to those children who live collectively with only the care of social workers,” said He Xiao-ling, the person in charge of the simulated family project.

There are currently 10 simu-lated families that have been paired up by the social welfare center. These families, living in rental apartments near the old center, will move into the new apartments soon.

Arranging overseas adoption is one of the services provided at the center. According to the head of the social welfare center, overseas families have adopted more than 700 kids since the center was established in 1992.

The United States is the coun-try for most of the children that have been adopted from the center. Each year, staff from Shenzhen Social Welfare Center visit a certain number of adopted children and their new families.

The center also put on a per-formance by the elderly and chil-dren in celebration of Children’s Day after the inauguration cer-emony Thursday.

Family moves fi ve times for their 150-kg pet pigWHEN buying a mini pig from a pet store eight years ago, a Shen-zhen woman in her 20s, didn’t expect the so-called “cup pig,” which is not supposed to grow, would become a pig weighing over 150 kilograms, the South-ern Metropolis Daily reported Wednesday.

When the woman, surnamed Dong, and her family tried to pick a pet at a pet store in Dongmen in 2010, they were captivated by a 4-kilogram mini pig that looked so cute in its cage. The store owner told them that the pig was a “cup pig” from the United Kingdom and it wouldn’t grow any more. Dong’s father paid 800 yuan (US$116) and brought the pig home.

Dong’s family treats the pig as a family member and call it Dudu. Dudu ate three times a day in the fi rst half year and its weight soared to 20 kilograms. The family then

realized that it wasn’t really a “cup pig,” but they didn’t want to give it away because they’d fallen for the pig’s cuteness.

Dudu’s weight continued to grow until it was 3 years old and it has remained at around 150 kilograms since then. “Our whole family like holding Dudu when we are sleeping, especially in winter, because its fat belly is so warm,” said Dong’s father.

Dong used to walk Dudu by putting it in a stroller in 2010 when it was still small, but since it grew bigger it barely leaves home because of its size and weight.

Dong said the family bathes the pig two to three times a week, and Dudu lets them know when it needs to use the toilet by grunting at the bathroom so that they would use a barrel to catch its waste.

Dong’s family has moved fi ve times since Dudu grew into a big pig due to complaints from

their neighbors saying that the pig’s snoring at night was too noisy. They moved into another apartment in the same residential estate Tuesday, and the family had to hire fi ve men to carry Dudu to their new apartment.

The family said that they’ve placed a sponge on the fl oor in Dudu’s room and put sound-proof cotton on the walls after

they received complaints from neighbors, but they still get new complaints every now and then.

A staffer from the community work station said that it’s legal for residents to raise pigs in their homes. The family can keep the pig as long as they vaccinate it and promise to reduce the noise made by the pig as much as pos-sible. (Zhang Yang)

Orphans and their care-takers celebrate at the welfare center’s new site in Guanlan, Longhua District, to celebrate the Children’s Day on Thursday. Zhang Qian

The entrance of the new site of the welfare center.

One of the seniors’ room at the new social center.

The 150-kg pet pig. SD-Agencies

Some senior residents perform at the welfare center’s new site.