Hong Kong - All 21,000 tickets to see three Chinese astronauts who performed the country's first spacewalk were snapped up in a matter of hours in Hong Kong Tuesday. Thousands of people queued up at 21 distribution outlets across the former British colony to get the free tickets for the appearance by the astronauts at the Hong Kong Stadium on Sunday.
The astronauts are due to fly into Hong Kong on Friday for a four-day visit, after which they will go to the gambling resort of Macau, a one-hour ferry ride from Hong Kong.
The spacewalk by Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng in September generated patriotic fervour that Beijing appears keen to capitalize on.
Earlier, China sent its gold medal-winning athletes to visit Hong Kong and Macau after the Beijing Olympics as part of a drive to boost Chinese patriotism in the former British and Portuguese colonies.
