@Jelle: Now I'm feeling really flattered...
Positive things about Beijing Zoo:
-despite the for western eyes alarmingly bare & hostile cages and exhibits, quite a bunch of animals look pretty healthy and well-cared. In fact, some of the reptiles I saw were among the most beautiful specimen I ever encountered being kept in a zoo or in private. The Plumed basilisks f.e., housed in a tiny tank, were stunning individuals with complete tails. Same goes for various rare species of turtles and tortoises. To confirm this opinion of mine, I showed some of the video footage and pics I made to some experienced colleagues, working in the zoo & exotic pet field. They were equally amazed how well some of the animals looked - despite the bad husbandry conditions.
-There are some pretty good exhibits that come close to what You see in many Western zoos-like the Penguins & Bats exhibit, the Indian Rhinos, the crane pond or the pythons exhibit. Connecting the indoor crocodilian enclosure via channel with an outdoor pool is quite a nice idea.
-One should not forget that quite a few of the exhibits for surplus animals/aggressive males & the nonpublic exhibits behind the scenes of many modern and popular western zoos (San Diego!) aren't that much different from what I saw there in China. Beijing Zoo just shows its "underwear", if so to say.
-Despite the bad looks, Beijing Zoo seems to be successful in keeping and even breeding species western zoos seem to have problems with acquiring & keeping-like Francois' Langurs, Argalis, Red Gorals, Snub-Nosed Monkeys (even though one Yunnan male showed diarrhoea) or Tibet gazelle. Of course, B. is closer to the "source" if so to speak...
-The Beijing Aquarium doesn't differ much from its European or American counterparts, besides putting a lot of emphasis on colours & effects (a tank crammed full of silbery shiny Arowanas or orange Blood parrot cichlids, a so-called "cruel breed" no longer allowed for sale in some European countries). The Giant sturgeon exhibit was highly impressive.
There are, however, a lot of things one could criticize about this zoo-and they're not just some little "cosmetic" details:
-The husbandry of many species (reptiles & amphibians, Apes-even though the gorilla outdoor exhibit looked at first glance like that of a western zoo-, Chinese Mountain Cat (poor old thing), tapirs, parrots, Wanderu and other monkeys, the civet in glass cubes, wolves, dhole, the bears, the elephants, the domestic animals, most of the ungulates, the Nocturnal house, the pheasants...) really need improvement-urgently! Barren concrete cages full of garbage and dirty scratched glass walls simply shouldn't be part of a zoo nowadays.
-There are several animals that highly need improved hoof trimming (Golden Takins!), a serious change of nutrion (severley obese orangs & gorillas) and better parasite prophylaxis.
And could someone change the tank full of dead newts and the one full of banded kraits?
-The visitors = one of the biggest problems. Whoever swears about misbehaving western zoo visitors should try them out instead. Feeding of the animals with all kind of things, harassing (including throwing rocks at animals or hitting the glass using full force) animals is a very common sight-with adults behaving like little nasty children. And if You have students tilting hydrochloric acid over moon bears to test their reaction, as it happened in that zoo for a longer time span, something is really going wrong. Same goes for posing with chimp babies, renting dogs from tiny cages for a walk or fishing for goldfish for a dime.
Summa summarum: Beijing Zoo has an impressive collection of animals (among many others: the only wild camel!) and shows a few steps torwards modern zoo animal husbandry. But a lot of the zoo needs improvement in regard of modern animal husbandry. However, many Chinese zoos tend to be even worse.
I do support jelle's point of view: with international cooperation, Beijing Zoo could really be changed to the better. Western Zoos could also profit from this by getting animals needed for their breeding programmes, exchanging their surplus (if B. Zoo can adequately care for them then) animals and even get highly interesting rare and "new" species, like the Snub-nosed monkeys.
PS: A friend of mine visited Beijing Zoo just recently. According to him, nothing has really changed.
