A sick child at the Beijing Children's Hospital touches the nose of cartoon character Doraemon, who visited the hospital on Wednesday, August 8. [Photo: stardaily.com]

Sick children at the Beijing Children's Hospital have a group photo taken with popular cartoon cat Doraemon and his friends, who visited them on Wednesday, August 8. [Photo: stardaily.com]

A travelling exhibition featuring the Japanese cartoon cat, Doraemon, will land in Beijing this Saturday. In promotion for the event, a robotic kitten and his friends visited sick children at the Beijing Children's Hospital on Wednesday.

Actors donned Doraemon look-alike suits and handed out toy gifts to the kids. The excitable youngsters tried all kinds of tests to discover whether the life-size toy was a real or not.

The exhibition, which just concluded its Shanghai tour on July 29, was the first such production since the cat was born some 37 years ago.

The Beijing leg of the exhibition will kick off at the Haidian Exhibition Centre from August 11.

The Doraemon character was created by Japanese cartoonist Fujiko F. Fujio in 1969. In the story, the robot cat was sent back in time from the 22nd century to aid a schoolboy, Nobita Nobi.

(CRIENGLISH.com August 9, 2007)