Panda "visits" village in Sichuan

CHENGDU, May 31 (Xinhua) -- A giant panda has been caught casually wandering around a village in southwest China's Sichuan Province, authorities have said.

The panda was spotted in Jinbo Village in Wenchuan County on Thursday morning, as locals were repairing a road.

Yao Liang, a local villager, saw the panda first, behind a group of villagers fixing a road.

"The panda was not scared to see us at all," Yao said. "It continued to wander around and even went into a villager's house at one point."

Worried about scaring the animal, the villagers immediately stopped working and reported its presence to forestry authority and the local government.

The China Conservation and Research Center for Giant Pandas said it was a captive panda that belonged to the center.

Sichuan has the largest population of giant pandas in China. At the end of 2015, it had 1,387 wild pandas and 364 captive ones, accounting for 74 percent and 86 percent of the national total, respectively. Enditem