Safari park and feeding the tigers

China, the land of rules and regulations, is surprisingly apathetic when it comes to the worth of an actual person. Maybe this culture develops from living in a country with almost 1 billion people. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there and you better fend for yourself. You see examples of it every time you walk out your door. The fact that I barely get a "ni hao" and absolutely no eye contact when I check out at the grocery store. The old man in the subway that shoves me out of the way to get to the door first. The constant game of chicken that you play every time you try to cross a street (I have a green light AND a little crosswalk man that says it's MY turn). The stories could go on and on. I don't like it, but I'm a little more used to it. It's just China.

Even knowing all of this about China, we were surprised to find ourselves in a metal cage surrounded by a lot of hungry tigers, thinking, they'd NEVER let us do this in the States!


Why were we in a cage, you ask? Eric and I went to the Shenzhen Safari Park with our friends just before we left for the States in December. The winter has been so mild, that we've tried to take advantage of our Saturdays and get outdoors. We've only had 2 really cold spells, but they've only lasted for 1-2 weeks each. Most days we've been sitting pretty in the mid-low 60s. Perfect weather! We figure that since the summers are so miserable, fall and winter are the best times to get out and explore the city. The safari park is a medium-sized zoo with a lot of animal interaction. You can feed a lot of the bigger animals like the giraffes and elephants. You can ride on a camel or an elephant. And you can go visit the tigers!

Proof that we were actually there;)

This kangaroo has it's baby in the pouch, you can see it's little front legs sticking out.

Here's the crew: Eric, the Nash's and the Warr's

We didn't get to feed the giraffes, they weren't hungry.

We got to feed the elephants carrot sticks. Their trunks are so amazing!

They use the end of their trunk to grab things, it's almost like an opposable thumb.

At the very end of the park, you can pay 50 yuan to get loaded in the special steel-caged bus (best 50 we ever spent). They drive you out into this giant tiger and lion enclosure. Apparently this park has more big cats than any other enclosure or zoo in the world. They have over 100 tigers and lions. Once you get locked in your cage (not unlike the scuba divers in a shark cage), they start handing out the skewers and the band-saw chicken. 

*On a side note, as an American, it's a regular occurrence to get stared at. Since we were a pretty big group of Americans (6 adults and 4 kids), we got more than just a few stares. Actually it was more like full-on gaping. We chuckled as we walked around the park that people were looking at us more than the zoo animals. We thought it was slightly ironic and very apropos that the American's were now in the cage.*

Our guide instructed us to keep fingers away from the cage (I wonder why?). It was pretty obvious that the tigers had done this before because as soon as the bus entered the enclosure and the chicken came out, the tigers ran up to the bus. Now there weren't 100 tigers around the bus, probably only 5-7 at a time. The bus driver stopped and we got to put chicken on the skewers. We poked them through the cage holes to feed the tigers. We weren't expecting the tigers to get up on their hind legs and put their front paws on the bus to reach the food. These guys were HUGE. And they were very very close. We got to feed them a few pieces, and then the bus driver moved on to another group of cats. We got to feed them a couple times. It goes without saying, but it was such an awesome experience. We were sure grateful for that cage though. They definitely wouldn't allow this in the States.

Only in China...