Shanghai Zoo: Giant Pandas, Red Pandas, and More

Giant Panda enjoying a roll in the grass

Whenever I travel, I always like to visit zoos.  On both of my trips to China, in 1995 and 2005, I went to the Shanghai Zoo.  Here is what I wrote in my diary in 1995 and a few of my pictures from 2005.
We set off for the zoo, showing the taxi driver the Chinese map with the picture for the zoo. [The Chinese name for zoo sounds like “Dongwa Yuan” but when we tried to say it or any other Chinese word, our pronunciation was wrong and no one understood us. Chinese is a tonal language and we had a hard time knowing the right intonation for each word. Using pictures and maps turned out to be the best way to communicate.] At the zoo we paid at the booth and entered with another Westerner, the only one we saw all day. 

We came first to the reptile house (also fish and amphibians) which required another payment and went in to see an extensive display of fish–large and small–turtles, frogs, snakes, and caimens.  Next we went to the birds.  (The zoo is organized by animal class.)  Only after spending about an hour at the birds did we realize we’d seen just a fraction of the zoo. 

Peacocks

Outside a new flight cage Art interacted with a crested crane, which bobbed up and down with the camera as Art changed positions to get a good angle–much to the delight of the Chinese zoo visitors.  Later we decided that the crane probably thought the red visor on Art’s baseball cap was the very large bill of a female bird!  The zoo also had a huge Ferris wheel, bumper cars, a petting zoo and animal show, which we passed on our way to the mammals.

Red Panda

At the mammal section we found a red panda and giant panda–both displayed quite nicely with glassed in cages inside and a grassy, shady area outside. On our way out we passed the elephants, which were chained in a large open area.  One mother had a very young calf, who was free to roam but never wandered far from the protection of the mother’s body.

Note: Our trip in 1995 was in July.  In 2005, I visited Shanghai in March and went to the zoo on a day when the animals seemed to be enjoying the mild early spring weather.  On both visits, I went during the week and the zoo was not very crowded with people. 

Rare animals of China