The Eastern Discovery Tour
Day 5

The zoo has a red panda enclosure that had about 4 red pandas.

Next to that was this enclosure with a Black and White Panda.

Another favourite area of the zoo was Bear Mountain. It had three or four large enclosures, that were used to display a variety of different Bears.

Here the Polar Bear found in Bear Mountain.

The Big cat house was better lit than the one in Beijing, and the cats did show fewer signs of distress. I'm wondering if this is because some of the animals also perform tricks in shows. I would prefer it if all zoo animals were in suitably large enclosure with natural enrichment. In some cases, such as what happens with Sea Lions in the UK, if a suitable enclosure isn't available an animal can be entertained by doing tricks, rather than it going mad from boredom. It's not my preferred solution, but it's the lesser of two evils.

This photo shows the problem with the outdated cat enclosures rather nicely. You can see one animal outside, and another trapped inside, as their aren't enough outside areas to go around.

This area of the Zoo was called Monkey Island. You can walk behind a short fence in an area the monkeys run free. This was a huge area, I'm wondering if they could have also have used this area for some of the other animals in the zoo like the peacocks, lemurs and squirrel monkeys, as this will mean they wouldn't be stuck in the outdated enclosures any longer.

The reptile house is best avoided. This photo is of one of the better enclosures. Some were a lot darker, I saw 1 dead snake in one of them, and a turtle pool full of rubbish that had been thrown it it.

After the Zoo I got the taxi back to the station. I had a problem here, because it was so busy I had to queue up for about 50 minutes to get a train ticket for a 30 minute train journey. There aren't that many places you can buy return tickets in China. I am told that if you write down the instructions you can book back when you arrive in the morning when it's quieter, although you can only book a seat for a certain time in advance, meaning you need to have planned ahead.

Here are two bullet trains at Beijing South station.