Shenzhou-13 taikonauts Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu - who are living and working in the country's Tianhe space station core module - send blessings via video to all Chinese people around the world at a Chinese Lunar New Year gala held on January 22, 2022. Photo: cnsphoto

 
China's Shenzhou-13 taikonauts are ready for the upcoming Spring Festival in outer space and are planning to eat dumplings with three fillings to celebrate the traditional holiday, with Chinese netizens expressing excitement and wishing them a happy new year.

The three crew members - Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu - will be able to eat dumplings with three different kinds of taste - pork and cabbage filling, Spanish mackerel stuffing and day-lily buds fillings, with many netizens curious over how crew members made the dumplings in outer space.

Zang Peng, an expert from China Astronaut Research and Training Center said in a previous interview that they have made special design and are keeping the answer a secret until Spring Festival when everybody will know how crew members make dumpling in outer space.

"It's so sweet," one netizen wrote, appraising working staff's preparation for the three crew members. The three crew members have decorated the space station core module with traditional Chinese paper-cuts, couplets and lanterns. 

Some netizens were excited to find that the couplets reading as "the country is prosperous and the people are at peace," and sent their best wishes to them. "They have even more lanterns than I have in my home," one netizen wrote. 

The crew members have sent blessings via video to all Chinese people around the world and wish them a happy new year. They also conveyed their great respect to Chinese frontier officers and soldiers deployed in the Karakoram Mountains.

The frontier soldiers sent the astronauts Chinese New Year's gifts including a stone from Karakoram Mountains with the paintings of the three crew members. 

Global Times