Friday December 5, 1997

The Xiamen zoo was my destination today. I don't like zoos as a rule but I figured I should see what a zoo is like in China. Finding the zoo was no problem since I walk by it every time I go downtown; it's about two blocks from my hotel. Five kuai gets you through the front gate off of Zhong Shan Lu (Middle Mountain Road) into a peaceful park.

I wandered around for a while, passing folks doing tai qi, the traditional form of exercise for balance and flexibility, and groups of old men and women playing mah jong and cards at stone tables next to the water. After a while it occurred to me that this place was pretty quiet for a zoo. Just where could the animals be?

I followed some people over a little bridge to a one story building with a row of windows beneath the eves. It seemed like an unlikely place for animals but when I got inside there they were. Everywhere I looked there were animals. Not only that but they weren't even in cages!

Wait a minute - what is a tiger doing in the same room with the birds? And they're awfully still. Hey, these are dead animals! A zoo of stuffed and mounted animals? Not even stuffed nicely, yet. Badly painted and insect-eaten, these are only the tatty remnants of nature's once-splendid mortal coils. Watching the families come through the rooms I wondered what kind of impression of animals the kids were getting if this was their only source of information.

These taxidermical former occupants of the zoo (as I assumed they were) present a wide selection of local and foreign fauna including tiger, lion, bear, yak, camel, rhino, chimpanzee, gibbon, macaque, baboon, lemur, civet, shark, eagle, pheasant, tortoise; the displays carried over through a couple of buildings. At least the animals are not living in confinement, I reasoned, and the cost of running the zoo must be low. A zoo of former animals is better than a zoo of live animals any day in my books, given that the collection is not added to. I went back out into the sunshine and continued my wanderings, wondering what I might see next in this strange place.

It was then that I came upon the real zoo. It had to be a place for keeping live animals for I could see cages inside the gate. Another five yuan gained me entrance into what seemed a gaol from the middle ages; like descriptions I've read of the old London zoo. I have to say I was appalled and saddened by what I saw in this place of horrors.

Directly upon entering I was confronted with the site of a lone hippopotamus in a sunken enclosure about seven metres square filled to a depth of about four feet with dirty brown water. A concrete blockhouse above water level was in one corner with a sloping ramp down into the water. Gathered around one corner of the enclosure, a group of zoo-goers were tossing chunks of bread into the gaping maw of the hippo as it waited below, obviously well conditioned to the state of its existence. The animal simply held its head above water, mouth open, waiting for food to land on its huge tongue. Eventually tiring of throwing morsels to the hippo the crowd moved on, so I took a closer look. The hippo, thinking I was going to feed it, opened wide and I got to see what a hippo with dental problems looks like. I hope this sad and pathetic creature is simple-minded; anything with any intelligence would be very unhappy here. A pile of bread remained on the stone wall on the other side of the bars from me, beyond the reach of the hippo, so I took a deep breath and blew the fragments off the wall into the big pink oral abyss before turning away.

The hippo enclosure was more or less in the middle of the avian display area. The birdcages were maybe two by two metres and three metres high constructed of concrete block with bars and mesh on the front for viewing. Each cage contained birds of a single species, mostly tropical birds like cockatiels, parrots, mynahs, doves, budgerigars. There were a pair of Great Hornbills looking ragged and defeated; even the yellow of their beaks looked duller than I've seen it in the wild. I doubt that they can even spread their massive wings in their small prison. What a contrast to the majestic birds flying overhead I had seen the previous year near Thailand's Kau Sauk National Park.

On the other side of the hippo was a larger enclosure about 25 metres long by ten deep and ten metres high. Inside was a display of waterfowl in conditions so crowded I was amazed that the smaller birds risked flying. There was a single, large stork for whom the enclosure was obviously too small for flying. Seagulls, terns and smaller birds were able to fly about the enclosure and some had made nests on platforms suspended from the metal mesh canopy.

Up a set of stone steps past the mourning doves I chanced upon the monkey enclosure. There was no sign describing the animals but they looked like howler monkeys, small and brown. There appeared to be a single family unit inside the enclosure which was reminiscent of a domed birdcage except it was about seven metres in diameter. Two adults, two juveniles, two babies playing and swinging amidst a skeletal former tree. A perimeter fence one metre away from the cage kept the primates from getting too close to the primates. Still, by leaning over, people were able to hand pieces of bread to the monkeys. I was surprised that feeding of the animals was tolerated, yet it was even condoned - the bread was being sold at the entrance to the zoo! I was even more surprised when one guy took a swipe at one of the monkeys, trying to grab its arm. The man's female companion tittered in delight at this display of masculine dominance. The monkey was used to this kind of thing, though, and managed to evade his grasp.

A single giraffe was across from the monkeys in a cage of about the same size, the stone floor covered in straw and waste. The mammal enclosures continued to the left of the giraffe with a line of 2x2x3m cages side-by-each: two wolves, two black bears, lions - the male sleeping as the female paced, a huge Siberian tiger still managing to look regal despite almost completely filling his tiny dark cage, gibbons, sun bears and pandas (the small browny red kind, not the other big black and white kind). I watched while a couple of grown men, likely in their late twenties, taunted the wolves with raised fists. Every time the men would bring their arms down the wolves would cringe even though separated by bars of steel and a distance of over a metre; it seemed the wolves had experience with fists brought down in anger. As the zoo keeper came by with a bucket of vegetables for the giraffe I said "You should be ashamed of this place".  Of course I said it in English. He gave no response so I don't know if he heard or understood or was just ignoring me.

Back down the steps, past the bird cages and on the right was a row of cells for what appeared to be the problem cases. Some beat-up looking macaques were in separate cells; probably in for disorderly conduct and assault. One of them was inside a cage inside his cage. It was 0.5m x 0.5m x 1m, barely enough room to move, yet he was pacing -- one step and turn, one step and turn. The classic behaviour pattern of a caged animal; I wonder how many of them go insane and how long it takes them to get there. There were a couple more red-pandas next door sleeping on a shelf at the side of the cage. I don't know what they were in for, they looked docile enough.

The final two enclosures were on the other side of the jail and were large, outdoor pens 15 by 10 metres with a one metre high fence around them. On the left was a group of five ostriches and on the right a lone bactrian camel. A zoo keeper there was trying to drag one of the ostriches somewhere by it's neck but it managed to escape and made for the other side of the pen. The zoo keeper turned his attention to the camel, filling a bucket with water from a hose, for drinking I presumed, before walking off.

Behind the pens the city loomed up in the background, a pink apartment block filling the sky. Its balconies were enclosed in steel bars - this seemed a fitting complement to the sights I had just seen and tempered my distaste a bit. This place is safe for neither man nor beast. If you're not on one side of the bars you're on the other. Even so, at some point the positions might be reversed.

I made my way back out through the park and found a place to sit for a while. How, I wondered, could a culture that had known thousands of years of continuous history treat animals like this, while we in the west have just recently begun to stop tolerating this kind of treatment of animals in our own zoos? Shouldn't they know better after all this time, shouldn't they have decided animals deserve better treatment a long time ago?

I can't believe that there is any evil or deliberately unkind nature at work. Maybe they looked at the issue a long time ago and dismissed it as sentimental BS, I don't know. There must be some deep currents driving the differences in these cultures - it's going to take a while before I can figure out what they are.