The zoo, last time I went there was last centry...okay, I'm not that old, but last time I went to the zoo was really long long time ago. There are mostly two reasones that I no longer went to the zoo:
1) The absence of animals. Most zoos in China don't really have any animals, they will find all kinda excuses for the absence of animals. Polar bear and penguin are too hot to stay, panda is on the trip to Taiwai visiting his buddy fellas, tiger is away for hospital, monkeys are on the street performance to earn some dough...what is the point of going to the zoo when all you see are cages and sevral birds?
2) Don't like the smell.
3) Don't like to see animals being kept in cages as I grow older.
Yeah it is been really a long time since I last went to the zoo. I don't even remember what zoo is like until I got off the subway...
The first step out of the subway exit, what you will see is lots of street sellers trying to sell you candy floss, spicy noodles, stone-fried chestnuts and toys and handi-crafts....all those things are exactly the same as they were in my childhood memory.
In front of the hand-made bicycle stand, there is a girl kicking and screeming and doing whatever she can to get a little iron-string bike, god I could tell you I was like that when I was little, or even worse.
As we moved on, we saw more kids passed by since we were getting closer to the zoo. I think the other fun thing about going to the zoo is watching kids. They are so so cute, chubby face, dark, soft and shiny hair, big head and the little angel wings they wear, they were runing up and down happily. That is something I always always want to see, except when they get annoyed and start screeming and never want to stop.
So before you even realize it, here we are in the zoo. The entrance ticket is 30RMB, I certainly expect they really have some animals inside.
It is a really big zoo. To someone who are from a small town like me, that is huge. It is basiclly like a big forrest with all those animals, the difference is they keep animals in cages.
The first animal we saw were flamingo. It was the first time I saw flamigo in my life, they are really pink and were kept on the small island in the middle of the pond...I want to see them clearly so I went closer. They did not move a tiny bit, they seem to be resting then...more like a orstrich to me, only they are pink, and more skinny.
Moving on, as we got to the sweet home of 'National Treasure'--panda. Speak of them, I got some negative things to say about them: yes they are chubby and cute and blah blah blah, but see what they do all day: eating, pooping, and sleeping. Mother nature would definitely eliminate them in turns of its survival skills: it would be too fat to move when someone come to attak it, it has to spend all day eating to intake enough nutrition because it has a lousy digestion system ...only humen being try to keep them, or maybe Chinese want to keep them--just to appreciate their cute image. Anyway, hope I can have some possitive thoughts about them after watching Kongfu Panda, oh wait, maybe they were as swift as it is in Kongfu Panda before humen beings tried to feed them and kept them as pets.
The next 'pet' we saw...oh yeah that's tiger. They were so lazy...exactly the way they are in my impression. Tigers in the zoo are always lazy, and smelly. That's why people were trying every way to tease them and perk them up. But sometimes even I found people did way too much: they throw things at them, spilt water to them and everything...yes the King of the Forrest are in the cage and they can't bite your ass off at this point, but just leave them alone, how would you feel to be teased by thousands of idiots every day. But I saw an interesting scene: a little boy wearing his split panties( about 3-4 years old) quitely watching the tiger while his dad or uncle or whoever that is was reaching his hand with a bottle out to the tiger trying to tease it, maybe the kid was just scared that his buddy might be bitten by the big cat or something, he started to shout: leave it alone! Followed a hard spank on his buddy. Yeah that was done by a kid wearing split panties. Way to go boy!
Then we kept moving and moving and saw wolves and foxes and bears and other animals that I don't even know how to say their names in English nor in Chinese...It was kinda complicated feeling watching them...they reminds me of my childhood so much, they reminds me of the excitement of seeing them when I was little, and jumping and laughing and all, but I do feel sorry for them for being kept in the cage and feed by humen beings...
Here comes the biggest excitement of all--big playground in the zoo--wonderland of kids! It was so sweet to be there! I know this is Nanjing not my hometown Liuzhou, but how come everything look so familiar to me?
The marry-go-round, the wood horse was so tall to me but now it is so small.
The pirate boat, I was too scaried to get in before, but now, it looks small too, a piece of cake.
The swing seat, hell this was the thing made me puke and dizzy for the rest of my visit when I was little, I still fear it, better stay away from it.
The ferris wheel, well, we did not have that thing back then...
and many other exciting games...they still look cool to me, just the ticket price is ten times expensive as ten years ago. And this time, no brother and cousins accompany, no ice creem bought by my uncle...I was a giant in the dwarfs world...haha.
It was already getting dark then, but since we have lots more to see, we kept moving.
Ahhhhhhhhhh the naughty monkeys, they were happy as hell living in their paradise created by human. And I also had an impressive story to tell you about monkey in my childhood:
When I was around 6, my bro was around 2 and my cousin was around 3 or 4--that was long time ago. We had a young nanny take care of us back then. It was a beautiful weekend and our nanny decided to take all of us to the zoo. So she hold my 2-year-old bro in her arms, I was dragging the left corner of ther shirt while my cousin was dagging the right corner--off we went to the zoo. It was a great time when the drama happened:
We came to the monkey cage, all of us were so excited to see those little monkeys. My little cousin desided he wants to get into the second fence and try to feed the monkeys. So my nanny hold him up and get over the first fence--there he was standing face to face with the monkeys, then he squatted down, moved a bit closer to the cage--the cage has very small finger-size holes--reaching his little hand with a piece of tangerine to the cage, oops, maybe should get a bit closer. Then my cousin moved his little chubby butt a bit closer so that he could feed the monkey, BANNGGGGGGGGGGG! The monkey which was waiting for the tangerine sticked its finger out for somehow and grab a batch of my cousin's hair and pulled them out and hide them under its butt and pretended nothing happended--what a monkey! But my cousin's head was too close to the cage and he did not realized it.
My cousin was scaried shitless and did not even know how to cry. And our nanny, she was scared shitless too, she jumped into the first fence and took my cousin out, took a close look at his injury--hell, that part was bold and spotting blood came out from the pores because of the tough pull. Lucky no scratching, otherwise my cousin will need some extra shot in the butt and even some IV just in case some animal disease.
The three kids was staring at our nanny did not know what to do, neither did our nanny...then she made the silliest decission ever--she took us on a really long circle hoping my cousin's hair will grow back a little bit before arrived home so that parents will not find it out. She knew our parents will be so piss off when seeing this. But we did not know about that, all we knew was we were going home and the trips seems a bit long, but it doesn't matter cuz we played all the way back.
Of course my cousin's hair did not make any progress when we got back so our nanny had to tell the truth. The adults were not so angry though, no serious injury anyway so they just started laughing at my cousin for being naughty and silly... That's pretty much the story, we still make fun of my cousin with that story now.
Well guess we are still at the zoo in Nanjing, but I'm a bit tired now, wrote too much today. and that's pretty much the visit. If you haven't been there yet and you are still in Nanjing, you should definitely go! The smell of animal would not even be so bad if you take your date with ya!
