Visitor!

This past week, I've had a visitor come and visit me in Pengshan: my good friend Nicole! She and I took many Chinese classes together in college, and this month she was traveling around China doing research on animal rights for a research paper in her final year of college. When I found out that she was coming by Chengdu, I insisted that she had to stay with me while she was here! Over the last week, we've had a blast. On Sunday, I took her into Chengdu and we visited a couple places that I have been meaning to go, but haven't gotten around to seeing yet: the local antique market and the Chengdu Zoo.

We went to the antique market first, and it was delightful! It consisted of a ton of stalls full of old Chinese artifacts, including pottery, jewelry, and other knickknacks.

One stall even had an old phonograph!

I could have spent hours there sorting through everything, but we had other things planned, so after an hour we headed off to the Chengdu Zoo.

Actually, we had originally planned to go see the Panda Research Base, which Chengdu is so famous for. However, google maps led us astray and instead of taking us to the breeding grounds for adorable pandas, it took us to a very industrial part of Chengdu, with no pandas to be found. Luckily, when we consulted the map, we discovered that we weren't actually far from the zoo, so we decided to catch a bus there instead.

Zoos have always been a conflicting experience for me. On the one hand, I love animals, and it's a treat so see so many exotic, beautiful animals in one place. But on the other hand, it's always slightly depressing to see them pent up in cages. And yes, I know there are a lot of justifications for zoos and that it's not like they can just release zoo animals into the wild, but that doesn't change the fact that zoos always make me a little uncomfortable.

The Chengdu Zoo, however, was even more depressing than usual. Their selection of animals was impressive and varied. I got to see some animals that I had never seen before in any American zoo:

This was my first time seeing a Golden Monkey. They're native to Sichuan!

The squirrel monkeys were adorable.

A beautiful White Tiger.

Some baby deer.

A hippo at feeding time. Look at that jaw!

But, while the animals themselves were gorgeous, their habitats left a lot to be desired. With the exceptions of the pandas and some of the monkeys, most of the exhibits were far too small for the animals containing them. The tigers, in particular, were almost all on edge, pacing the lengths of their enclosures. Additionally, most of the cages were open to the sky, which meant that visitors were throwing them bits of food to tempt them closer to the windows. At nearly every cage, the animals were right up near the edge, begging for food. Lastly, some of the animals' sleeping areas had large windows in them, which not only meant that they did not have somewhere to retreat to when they became agitated, but also that people were constantly banging on the glass, trying to get the animals to wake up and do something more interesting!

The lack of "zoo etiquette" was astounding. Simple things that are pretty ingrained in our culture (don't feed the animals! don't bang on the glass!) were simply ignored, and it made me realize how much I've taken that for granted. I can't say that going to the zoo was a pleasant experience, but it certainly made me think. What else is common in our society that is an anomaly elsewhere? What else have I taken for granted?