This is Not Your Average Zoo

Saturday morning we went off on our first major Chinese adventure!  Our coordinator Kelly rented a big van for us and we drove about an hour and a half away to get to the zoo.  My first impression once we got there was that there was a LOT of stairs.  Since we don't have enough stairs at school already.....
So we got to the entrance and there was this huge cliff with animal decorations covering it.  It was enormous, and super cool. 

The bathrooms by the entrance were also impressive; I have never seen giant hippo and rhino bathrooms before but hey, this is China.

Due to the impressiveness of the bathrooms, we were all pretty sure the zoo would be great, too.  There were tons of animals but some of the coolest included:

These beautiful tigers:

Red Pandas:

This crazy looking emu:

And of course super exotic animals such as raccoons, bronze turkeys, and llamas!

There were all of the above listed *normal* exhibits, plus tons more average zoo animals.  But, there were also many more not so "average" things at this zoo.  The first thing we noticed that confirmed we were in a zoo in China was that next to the big cat exhibits, they had cages of live chickens (and a random duck.)

 

 We found out from the lady standing be these foul friends that for 50 kuai (another more commonly used word for Chinese yuan) you could throw one of the chickens down to one of the lions, leopards, tigers, ligers, or wolves.  I wasn't interested in doing that but some of the people in my group were so they bought a chicken and threw it to the leopards. It was crazy and a little sad, but that chicken was dead long before she hit the ground. 

A lot of the animals looked sad, but most of them looked ok. I got to sit in an elephant trunk and on the back of a camel, and hold a HUGE snake around my neck. I wish enormous zoos in the US only cost 5 dollars to go to....