Bears and Birds

Chinese Icon:
Despite the warnings about the state of the zoo, and the obvious low entry fee, Cullen and I set out on Wednesday to see the Giant Pandas that are China's most symbolic living animal. The ticket boot was not met by an orderly line, or criss-crossed with tapes to create a long, single file of humans. This booth was swarmed by a seething mass of people ready to throw money into the gaping maws of the booth to receive printed slips in exchange. The trick was to push your way through the mass and slip your money in. Cullen, the master of Chinese order, slid his money in and received two yellow tickets... for the “Beijing Changhe Water Tour Package.” We entered the zoo and they ripped the end most tab from the ticket.

Slipping through the slithering mass, we made it to some air, far past the giant panda exhibit, out into an area with peacocks, pheasants, and other ground nesting birds. The cages of these birds were not only small, but barren. The floors were covered with dusty dirt. There were a few branches for perching and a small house-like structure for roosting. We moved on.

The bobcat cage had a shattered panel of glass that was still up. This not only made it difficult to see the bobcat, but it also made me wonder what had happened to shatter the glass. Was it old, had one of these children thrown a rock at it or banged too hard? How long had it been that way? All curiosity aside, I hope they change that panel soon.

We figured that the “Changhe Water Tour” was probably a safer bet than trying to squeeze through the writhing mass of people and suffer with the animals. I can't tell you how many times I saw a child not only crawl on railings they shouldn't have, but bang on cages, glass, and other things to get the animal's attention. Not to mention adults that threw food over the cages, or banged on them as well. I was a bit saddened by the state of leisure these people tormented these animals with.. but I suppose this was something I have seen many times before. Just not on such a large scale. It was as if there was such a mass of people there, it would have been impossible to stop them all from doing it.

When we saw the immense line for the tour... we stood for about 20 min. in the line and had enough. We couldn't take the wait. There had to be somewhere we could get some small relief from the crowd. We decided to go visit the penguins. They had to be less crowded. We saw the giraffes on the way, and they had about the same amount of room that the giraffes have in Houston. We got distracted by the monkeys and the large birds prior to making it to the Penguins. The birds cages were a bit small for the numbers of birds to a cage. Though they did have both an outside and inside cage for many of them. The gate was open today so they could wander outside if they like. My best guess is that they do this so they can be heated in the cold winter, instead of left out in the inclement weather. Parrots wouldn't do too well in freezing temperatures.

Entry into the penguins exhibit was another ticket for 10 yuan (about $1.50) which we suspected would make the crowd a bit smaller. We were wrong. The exhibit was so small that the crowd was pressed up against the glass of the penguin habitat. They were, once again climbing and banging. There were probably about ten penguins in the habitat, and of the ten only three were facing the crowd. The rest were all turned away. I don't blame them for a second.

Cullen had it. He was ready to go. I insisted that we see the Pandas. The reviews of the zoo had all said that though the rest of the zoo was a bit sad, the pandas had it good and were well taken care of. The panda exhibit and research center here in Beijing is sponsored by Volkswagen, so that's probably a major reason that the pandas are in such great quarters. We stood in line to enter the Giant Panda exhibit, ready for whatever that entailed. Cullen was anxious of course. He had been ready to go long before my request to see the pandas, so he was practically doing a dance to get out. Once we entered the gates to the panda exhibit (Our ticket seemed to be good for that as well), the crowd didn't thin at all. We were ushered through an old panda exhibit, with no current occupants, out into the “Olympic Panda Exhibit” where we caught a glimpse of 2 pandas playing outside. We entered the building for the “Indoor Visiting Center” and saw about four pandas lying around in the sunny glass enclosure. They seemed to be quite content with their home. Once we exited the building, we wandered around it for a little bit longer and caught a rare treat. One of the pandas had climbed up a tree, and was relaxing and gnawing on the tree. The panda lounged long enough for me to catch several stunning photos of him. It was time to head out of the crowd. We were done.

Run AWAY! RUN Away!:
Exiting the zoo was almost as difficult as entering. The mass at the exit gate was just as thick, and monitored by police. I don't know how he caught them, but while we were exiting, some youths were trying to sneak in. The guy that was watching the gate actually caught them. I suppose if you do it all day, you tend to get an eye for these things.

We headed for food, it was already about 3pm and we were starving. We had tried twice to eat some Chinese vendor foods, but they were so horrible we threw them out. The weenie on a stick tasted as if it was mostly flour or dough, and the two drumsticks were covered in an inch thick layer of breading where the chicken inside was cold. So we had to find real food. We walked down a street and found a restaurant that said it was Muslim cuisine. I'm still not sure what Muslim cuisine is, other than it has no pork, but it was good enough to satisfy us for the time. We had a potato dish, some chopped green beans, and a dish with eggplant and beef. I ordered three, certain that at least one of them would be palatable to us. Amazingly, all three were favorable. The beef had portions that neither of us would touch, but the potatoes and green beans were tasty.

Satisfied that we had enough to eat, the search for a taxi began. We continued down the street, seeing many taxis, but all full, or ignoring us. We switched sides of the street, and finally got a taxi. About a block from where we hopped into the taxi, we heard tons of song birds. There were cages upon cages strung up in the trees. I was uncertain if they were selling the birds, or if this was their way of keeping the songs in that area. The sound was lovely, yet a bit out of place in such a busy intersection.

I still smell the masses of people on my clothes.