BEIJING ZOO and PEKING DUCK, Beijing, China (Day 5)

Red Panda, Beijing Zoo

The following is an excerpt from the diary of our trip to China July, 1995.  We were traveling with three friends, spending five days in Beijing and then three days in Xian.  China has changed greatly since our visit but many of the places we went to are still among the popular tourist spots.

Golden Monkey, Beijing Zoo

Beijing, Day 5:  Our last day in Beijing was a free day with no organized tours.  In the morning, Art and I took a taxi to the zoo.  The weather was hot but not unbearable.  The panda exhibit is the first inside the gate and required an extra fee.  The inside enclosures were filled with cut bamboo and one panda was eating.  The others were more active outside.  We also photographed a red panda, which circled around and round its enclosure before finally climbing a tree to sleep.  After leaving the pandas we searched for other Chinese animals and saw some cranes and golden monkeys.  The zoo is huge and we got somewhat lost because there weren’t many maps.  At the far end we found two polar bears play-fighting in the water.

Polar bears, Beijing Zoo

After the zoo we took a taxi to the Great Bell Temple to see the biggest bell in China.  You can read more about the bell in my post on 6/30/14.

Preparation of Peking Duck

That evening we went out for a Peking duck dinner at a restaurant recommended by the hotel.  The waitress convinced us that we needed two ducks (for five of us) but we would have been better off with just one because they were so greasy and rich that we ate too much and felt sick the next day.  The waiter brings the whole roast duck on a cart and then carves the pieces into piles on small plates.  You eat them with your hands, folding the duck pieces inside thin pancakes that have been swabbed in bean sauce. Afterwards we watched them prepare and cook the ducks and bought a few souvenirs, including a duck hat for Art.

Tiananmen Square at Night

We then walked back to our hotel via Tiananmen Square, where people were picnicking, talking, playing badminton and soccer, and flying kites.  (Badminton was obviously very popular in China. Every night on television we saw broadcasts of the international badminton championships which were being played that week.)  The moon, which had been a crescent earlier in the week, was growing fuller and small bats flew among the kites catching insects.  After a hot day, the relatively cool night air was refreshing.

My bird kite purchased in Beijing

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