From a very young age, Greta's favorite animal has been the giant panda. Collections of pandas have filled her room....stuffed animals, jewelry, notebooks, bags, shoes, decorations, books....if it has a panda on it, we probably own it. One of her consolations about moving to China has been to see pandas in real life. (The bucket list is to hold a panda, but that is closed up tight right now....)
There are pandas in the Changzhou zoo. We were waiting for a pay check and the weather to cool down a bit before going. The time finally came. It was ear-to-ear grinning all around.
In addition to pandas, here are a few other tidbits about our zoo day:
As we have learned, *everything* is different in China, the zoo was not an exception. They have double (or more..) the amount of animals in the enclosures that we would have in the US. The visitors get to feed the animals if they buy the food from the zoo. This creates a condition that many of the animals are active and at the front of their enclosures waiting for food. (I'm not agreeing for a minute that this is the best method out there, but I will say that it does make for a more interactive, interesting zoo experience.) We did not learn you could buy food for the animals until the end of the day. All day we were just bewildered as to why people were ignoring the signs saying not feed the animals your own food and thought it odd that everyone seemed to bring carrot sticks for their lunches...) I should be used to having very foreign experiences by now, but I wasn't quite prepared for the differences at the zoo. I'll try not to be traumatized by the experience...they are doing the best they can here in China.
My phone was on the last leg of its lifetime at the zoo and I took several videos before it teetered off to nearly dead. So my picture selection is sadly limited.
The red pandas were so adorable. The enclosure where you could encounter them up close was locked, so we just enjoyed them from behind the glass. I did my 7th grade science report on red pandas so it was fun to see them in real life. They are much cuter in real life and have very cute personalities.
🐯 There were white tigers pacing back and forth behind their glass. They are fed a couple of times a day by a zoo employee. We did not see this, but we passed a couple of times and they were pacing even though it wasn't feeding time.
🐘We saw elephants begging for you to throw them carrots and cabbage.
🦚🦙 The peacocks pecked you, the llamas walked right up to you and begged for food. The lemurs were not out, but you could walk inside their enclosure, and I suppose you could feed them.
🐻There were 5 brown bears sitting at the front of the enclosure just 15 or so feet away from you with only a 4 ft high barrier and a moat between you and them. When someone was about to throw in a piece of food, they stood on their hind legs and raised their hand as if to say "Pick me!! Pick me to throw the food to!! They caught it in their mouths.
🦛We saw hippos with their mouths wide open waiting for a piece of cabbage to be thrown into the extremely fleshy opening. We were only a few feet away from that--close enough to see that the hippos are in need of a good dentist. In my opinion, when you can see the uvula of that dangerous of an animal, you're a bit too close.
🦁 The lions, were a bit farther out, maybe 20 yards, but you could buy a bowl of chicken pieces, don some plastic gloves and throw the meat into them. Or, you could use a sling shot they had for that.
The girls want to go back so I'm sure we'll venture there again. I do want to get pictures of the hodge podge statue collection there. It was kind of like a bevy of rejected of statues from lots of other places/projects. Quite entertaining. Here are the few I got:
I'll end on the comical message throughout the zoo:
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