28 March 2013
Panda overload
The metro system in Chongqing features elevated monorails. Not the silly little tourist ones like they are getting rid of in Sydney, but train sized ones you can fit a few hundred people on.
A great advantage of these for the tourist is you can look out the window and see off into the distance, which I enjoyed so much I missed my intended stop, but then I found myself at a zoo, by accident.
It was quite a nice zoo, big enclosures, and despite being in the middle of the city it was huge, took me 2 hours to march around it pausing briefly to take photos.
Once you move past the pandas, theres basically no one there, and even the pandas only had maybe 10 or so people.
The zoo had a surprising number of baby animals born on site, all of the pandas were but also lions, orangutangs, elephants, giraffes etc. Pretty much every enclosure had a sign explaining when it was born, in the zoo itself.
One particular panda, I forget which, holds the world record for breeding, having fathered 25 pandas, most of which have been shipped off to other places around the world.
Now that we have talked about live animals, lets talk about dead ones. On my way to the subway I saw a guy selling fresh dog or wolf heads. Just the head. Teeth bared, brain exposed, no ears, fur still on. I dont know what this was for! I should have taken a photo but he looked a bit shady. On my way back in the afternoon he was no longer there. Anyone know what you might do with the head off a freshly killed dog? Soup?
The view from the monorail revealed an inner city zoo, somewhere in the fog. Amusingly, when I looked out the window this morning I thought the sky was a dark shade of copper shrouded in fog and pollution.
I was concerned how I would handle that, it was far more polluted than anything I had seen. Until I stepped outside and it was fine. It was then I remembered my room windows have dark tinting.
Ok, lets get this out of the way, the lesser or red panda. The walls to this enclosure are low, and theres only one. Low enough to put your kids on to look over. What could go wrong?
Now for a series of panda photos. This one looks particularly happy. I think he might be the world champion breeder.
Mostly they just eat, I have only included one photo of each panda. They are all starting to look the same.
Too lazy to sit up whilst eating.
This one looks like me, constantly stretching its back.
Only a couple more, people seem to appreciate panda photos.
Last one (for now...)
Elephants, there were baby ones but they were inside the house thing. The field they have is really quite large, if they wanted to they could run around etc.
Same goes for the giraffes, but they mostly just want to stand right by the people.
These are baby lions. Not sure if they are dead or asleep, they wouldnt move. A human baby used all its powers of bashing on the glass to attempt to wake them, all to no avail.
Presumably they breed food for the other animals in the zoo too.
The infamous drop bear. Feared by blonde tourists visiting Australia.
KFC has decided to get in on the panda craze. I think I would rather eat the dog head soup.
Would you eat Korean food in China?
Of course you would, because its cheap and has lots of vegetables.
A photo of the impressive (to me) raised monorail tracks. Im aware no one cares and really just wants more panda photos.