DAY 312: Zoos are controversial things. One on hand, they aim to bring wild animals from faraway lands to urban areas, so that city folk who don't have the time, money or courage to see them in the wild can simply stroll around and see them all in a day before "Must See TV" starts. On the other hand, innocent animals are held in captivity for the convenience of Man -- their treatment depending on the level of professionalism of the zoo. Lonely Planet China's biased paragraph of the Beijing Zoo states that "All zoos are animal prisons, but Beijing Zoo seems like death row." As readers of The Blog may know, you can't believe everything you read in a guidebook -- particularly a Lonely Planet one -- so I decided to see the zoo for myself. Besides, I wanted to see the pandas.

The Beijing Subway took me to the Beijing Zoo in the northwest corner of the city center. With Lonely Planet's description and Ed's negative comments of the zoo in mind (he had been there before trekking The Great Wall with me), I expected it to be a depressing place where animals lived in tiny cages with no where to roam around at all. Ed said the exception to this was the Panda House, the Beijing Zoo's main attraction, but inside, pandas were trapped behind glass: one sloped over a tree branch like he was dead, another feeding on bamboo. It was a bit depressing to see them pace in circles around and around, waiting to go outside. On the outside I saw that, when given the opportunity, they had a big lawn to play around in, with a little jungle gym and a slide.

THE BEIJING ZOO WAS A FAIRLY BIG PLACE with impressive landscaping and many animals not in cages, but in paddocks surrounded by ditches to keep them out of harm's way to people. There were many depressing exceptions though, like the yak, the deer, the ground hornbill, the flamingos and the big cats -- although the predator felines took turns to stretch their legs out in a much bigger pavilion that surrounded their cages, which was a comforting though. It still wasn't like releasing them into the wild, but a compromise as far as zoos are concerned. Debate it if you'd like.

Of course there's no real substitution for natural habitats, but I suppose that's the challenge of zoo management -- finding the cost-effective balance between the allotment of animals' real estate and the paths in between within the total real estate given. While I would agree that a zoo is a sort of animal prison, I don't knock them; I have very fond childhood memories of zoos, ever since I rode an elephant at the Bronx Zoo on a trip with my parents as a kid. I understand the nature of a zoo and endorse any zoo that does its best to care for its residents. It's funny how Lonely Planet's China says Beijing Zoo is like death row; Lonely Planet's South America on a Shoestring describes the Mallasa Zoologico zoo just outside of La Paz, Bolivia as "kickass" -- and it was a much less maintained zoo than the Beijing one. My final analysis on the Beijing Zoo: I thought, as far as zoos were concerned, it was a decent one. I mean, not even in the wild could you feed an elephant.

I sort of zipped around the different animals -- from the indoor, open area tropical rainforest house to the lagoon to the African mammal paddocks -- all in a haste since I was still a little under the weather. Besides, not to sound like a snob here, but I'd seen most of the animals in their natural habitats already. I went back to the Panda House before I left that afternoon to see if they had been let out to play -- one had. It was sort of ironic; after the panda (picture above) played around on the jungle gym and scratched his ass for a bit, he paced around and around like he did that morning, this time wanting to go inside the cage. I guess it's true what they say: the grass is always greener on the other side.

STILL FEELING A LITTLE SICK, I decided to take it easy again to watch the Olympics in my room -- I swear I never heard the Chinese national anthem so many times in my life. Roommate Sam stayed in too but we briefly went out to get some local
food, which he bargained down using the limited Mandarin he picked up from his daily morning language lessons. We picked on lychees back on our way back to the room and watched a bootleg DVD of Fahrenheit 9/11, presenting Michael Moore's one side in the debate over whether or not George W. Bush should be re-elected president. Toni and Paul came in near the end pretty hammered after a night of boozing and sampling all the unorthodox animals to eat in Beijing: fried scorpions, grilled silkworms and dog. I'll admit I felt a little envious since I hadn't been around to join them -- it would have made for an interesting Blog entry -- but then again perhaps some animals might be better off in zoos than be served on a stick to drunken backpackers.