Chinese Zoos: An Intercultural Experience

For 60 RMB you can feed a tiger a chicken. For around 600 you can watch as a pack of lions take down a cow. For the Chinese, merely looking at animals in a zoo doesn’t seem to be enough: they want a show. Whether it’s paying to watch predators rip apart live prey or shoving cookies, potato chips, or random plants through the bars to watch herbivors eat, zoos in China promise to be vastly more of an interactive experience than they are elsewhere in the world.

After watching an exhibit full of monkeys in the Nanjing zoo eating and fighting over garbage, snack foods, and sodas that visitors would throw in to them, and visiting the zoo in Suzhou, I knew what to expect when I walked into the animal park of Taizhou. When you watch a culture doing things that you’ve been socialized to believe are taboo it holds your attention. Some could say that this is a part of the entertainment value of travel. Getting to those places where the people think and act differently than you is what it’s all about. It’s difficult to take a voyeuristic interest in people of your feather, you need to travel to be intrigued by culture. This is never more clear in China than when in a zoo: it’s not the animals who are the entertainment, it’s the people.

Bears get oranges

I saw a long, fat tongue flick out from between a small opening in an animal enclosure. It shot out of a thick, brown, furry snout and collected a piece of an orange that a human visitor had prompted it to take. I stood on my toes and saw that the tongue and snout were connected to a bear, and he seemed to relish the treats that the visitors passed through the little hole. Each time a fresh piece of orange was laid on the ledge near it, the tongue would flick out and taste it. Each time this would happen the crowd would get excited and revel in photo taking.

The bear exhibits are some of the most active in China, as these animals tend to be very responsive to the food that visitors offer to them. In Suzhou, I watched a bear who could catch pieces of food that were thrown to it.

Tiger in a cell

Bang, bang, bang, a group of visitors pounded on the glass enclosure surrounding a tiger. The giant cat just paced slowly back and forth across his 15′ by 20′ cell, ignoring the commotion. The floor of the enclosure was bare grey concrete and the room was conspicuous for what it lacked: everything. The tiger lived in a cage that was nothing more than four walls and a roof. There was nothing else inside — no trees, no big rocks, no mats, no bedding, nothing but cold concrete, an electric fence, and glass walls. There wasn’t even a balk at providing any “natural habitat” props. All the better to gawk at the animal inside, I suppose.

Camels

“Why do these trees have no branches or leaves?” I thought as I rounded a bend and looked out upon a small orchard of naked trunks. It did not take long before I realized the reason for this.

In front of the camel exhibit stood a mother with her daughter and a big bag of leafy greens, branches, and pieces of shrubs. They had apparently scoured the zoo for foliage to feed the animals. I watched as they reached over the barrier and shoved handfuls of plant matter between the bars of camels’ cage. The two giant, shaggy, hump backed ungulates gobbled down the offerings with gusto. Again, the small crowd shrilled with excitement. A young guy then began hand feed the giant, slobbering beasts. Lots of smiles.

Although there were signs that said, “Don’t feed the animals,” this regulation seemed to fall right alongside traffic laws and smoking bans in the very broad category of petty rules that Chinese people simply ignore. Barriers and signs do not inhibit the people of this country from doing what they want to do. If there’s not a person employed to stand around telling them to obey the rules then they must not be too important. There is a healthy disrespect here for petty authority and there’s a widespread notion that the population is too large to be controlled — two things that I like most about this culture.

Come on monkey, just take a toke

But then I saw something that challenged even my flabby sense of cultural relativism. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a monkey reaching his hand through the bars of his enclosure and seizing a short white stick that a young guy handed to him. It did not take long before I realized that it was a cigarette. It did not take the monkey much longer before he realized that it was hot. The poor primate burned his hand, screamed, bobbled the cigarette and then knocked it away from him.

This was apparently the show the guy who passed in the cigarette was looking for. He lit another one and tried once again to pass it in to the monkey. It wasn’t happening — primates learn from mistakes, and this monkey had learned not to take flaming sticks from assholes. So the guy moved on to the baboons and tried his ruse once again. The baboon just looked at him blankly, not taking the offering but still holding his open hand out through the bars of his cage. This baboon had apparently been there before, and he knew what he wanted: snacks. Getting the point, the crowd passed in various types of hard candy. The macaque next door also got in on the act, and I lost interest while watching him suckle a caramel.

Conclusion

“What do you think of China?” I asked a Dutch traveler recently in Shanghai.

He thought for a moment before replying, then said, “China is different.”

Exactly.