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This is NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.

China has launched an experimental spacecraft to fly around the moon and back to Earth in preparation for the country's first unmanned return trip to the lunar surface.

The eight-day program is a test run for a 2017 mission that aims to have a Chinese spacecraft land on the moon, retrieve samples and return to Earth. That would make burgeoning space power China only the third country after the United States and Russia to have carried out such a mission.

China's lunar exploration program has already launched a pair of orbiting lunar probes, and landed a craft on the moon last year with a rover onboard. None of those missions were programmed to return to Earth.

The latest mission is to obtain experimental data and validate re-entry technologies such as guidance, navigation and control, heat shield and trajectory design for the future moon-lander christened Chang'e 5. China's lunar exploration program is named Chang'e after a mythical goddess.

This is NEWS Plus Special English.

China's south-to-north water diversion project will effectively improve Beijing's eco-environment, with water flowing to the capital later this month connecting five major river systems.

The middle route of the transfer project will see a massive 10 billion cubic meters of water per year pumped through canals and pipes from a reservoir in central Hubei Province to northern China and Beijing.

The project connects the major rivers in Beijing with a section of the Grand Canal in the city, allowing water to flow to lakes and rivers in the capital city.

Beijing has more than 400 rivers with a wetland area of at least 10 square kilometers each, but such water sources have dwindled following decades of economic development.

Experts say that over exploitation of underground water has exacerbated the city's environmental woes.

With the diversion project, Beijing's water system, particularly rivers with historical significance and cultural value, will be partly restored.

The ambitious project was conceived by Chinese leaders in the early 1950s. It was approved by the State Council, China's Cabinet, in 2002, after debate lasting almost half a century.

You are listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.

The Forbidden City in Beijing has started the sale of one-year passes to better its service.

It is the first time the Forbidden City, also known as the Palace Museum, has issued annual passes.

An ordinary pass is priced at 300 yuan, roughly 50 U.S. dollars, while passes catering to special groups including senior citizens and students cost only half that price.

Pass holders will be eligible to visit the museum 10 times per year.

However, in order to ease the traffic in peak seasons, the passes cannot be used during the seven-day national holiday, beginning on October 1 each year.

Currently, a typical ticket costs 60 yuan.

This is NEWS Plus Special English.

The flourishing international vocational education programs in southwestern China's Chengdu city are expected to provide strong support for local economic development.

Chengdu Industrial Vocational Technical College is one of the institutions in the city that has vocational education cooperation with their foreign counterparts from countries that include the UK, the United States, Germany and Singapore.

Seventy-five graduates from the college's IMI international education program received IMI international qualification certificates last month, enabling them to find a job at an international company.

The college in Chengdu had been working with Britain's Institute of Motor Industry and Central College Nottingham for ten years before it launched the IMI program in 2012.

Officials from the college say that the program brings in British courses and an evaluation system to cultivate professional auto mechanics to international standards. These mechanics will provide strong support for the development of high-tech industries in Chengdu.

Chengdu is the provincial capital of Sichuan and home to 260 Fortune Global 500 companies.