hao_bao said:
Hi Chlidonias, your description of the zoo was very accurate and informative but what I disagreed with was the part quoted above. Suffice to say, I have only visited Beijing Zoo, Chengdu Panda Base, Chengdu Zoo, and Shanghai Wild Animal Park in China (also Taipei Zoo if we want to count Taiwan) so I am sure that there are far worse out there to compare it with. My Chinese partner told me this was 'average' compared to most Chinese zoos.
The intention of my opening paragraph was not to portray the zoo as a "world's best" sort of place, but simply to put aside the general perception which people have - even on this forum - that Chinese zoos are torture chambers where animals starve in tiny cells. There are a number of cages and sections at Chengdu which would not be acceptable in Europe or America (in particular those for most of the primates) but for most of the zoo you could very easily find equivalent cages in Western zoos. Zoo reviews are fairly subjective though, they depend on the person's own prejudices and knowledge; for my reviews I prefer to compare Asian zoos to Asian zoos. However I struggle to see how the zoo could be considered "average" for a Chinese zoo. But, with that said...
hao_bao said:
However, Chengdu was definitely by far the most squalid and rundown zoo I've visited in my life. I noticed you went in 2013, so perhaps things have deteriorated since then? It's not unheard of. I know that the director of Beijing Zoo was recently fired for mismanagement and corruption.
that really doesn't sound like my visit at all. There were a number of bad areas and a number of good areas, but "squalid and rundown" would not be at all an accurate description. I have no idea what the zoo is like right now, but certainly things can down-turn quickly in Asia. For example, in Malaysia the Melaka Zoo went from being one of the best in Asia (when I visited in 2011) to amongst the poorest (visited 2014) due to corruption and neglect.
hao_bao said:
The primate houses were very poorly planted with little in the way of greenery or privacy, just filthy barren concrete cells smeared with fecel matter and rotten vegetation. The big cats were running fretfully up and down in woefully inadequate quarters with zero privacy from the guests pounding on the glass. They also looked extremely malnourished with their bones sticking out at all angles.
indeed, most of the primates were housed very poorly. I covered all the primates in one paragraph of my review, and the start of that discusses the mostly-large and well-planted enclosures (presumably these are either no longer in this state, or you missed/did not mention them). The whole baboon/mandrill complex, in contrast, was like a series of prison yards - small concrete-walled sections of land - and even worse were the very small concrete cages elsewhere for macaques and guenons.
The leopard cages I noted as being "very small", however none of the cats I saw were in the state you describe.
hao_bao said:
The hippos were being goaded by guests, all manner of garbage thrown into their open mouths. When the hippo had had enough of being teased, he launched himself against the glass in an attempt to get at the guests. One Asian elephant was rocking back and forth displaying stereotypical behaviour whilst another smashed its trunk repeatedly against the iron bars of the sleeping quarters.
I can't comment on these observations of course. However the elephants were relaxed when I was there (although I don't pay much attention to elephants in zoos. I think I may have only seen one, as well). I can't recall the hippos of the top of my head, but I suspect their enclosure was one of the very small ones?
hao_bao said:
At no enclosure did any of the animals look healthy or well cared for, and there was no way this zoo would pass any animal welfare inspections in the UK. Perhaps the most distressing part was all the pet animals squashed into tiny tubs being sold outside the zoo gates, as though they were mere toys. How many hours they would have been cramped into those little containers in direct sunlight is beyond telling.
I can't say that any animals at the zoo looked unhealthy, apart for some individuals of the larger monkeys (such as the baboons and macaques) which were really the only species kept in extremely poor enclosures. Most animals at the zoo, in fact, looked in very good health.
I don't know one way or the other but I dare say the animals being sold outside were by private vendors, and that is just a fact of life in China.
