Guangzhou Zoo

Before our niece Abigail left, we took a two-day trip to Guangzhou, China.  It's just a couple of hours on the train from Hong Kong.  We wanted to go to the zoo in Guangzhou because we had heard it was pretty cool.  And it was!  We had a blast, even though it was incredibly hot!  

This zoo wasn't like any zoo I had been to before.  They clearly have more relaxed policies regarding the treatment of animals.  At times, that made us all really uncomfortable, like when they made the animals play basketball, ride bikes, etc. I will say though, that they do a lot of breeding at the zoo and have been able to maintain some of the animal species that have been in decline, like the pandas and white tigers.  They have more pandas in the zoo here in Guangzhou than they do in the entire U.S.! 

The kids all loved the elephants, especially the baby elephants.  So cute!  We went to an elephant show where they had the elephants doing little tricks like shooting water at people, kicking balls, walking along a balance beam and playing tether ball. It made us a little sad. For about 50 cents, (USD) you could sit on the little elephant afterwards and take pictures afterwards.  Something you wouldn't be able to do in the US, so we had to do it.

Abigail and Nora were both able to sit on the elephant and have their pictures taken.  Poor Calvin was too little.  They do have some standards of safety after all :).

For about 50 cents, you could do a lot of other things at the zoo, too.  You could feed the elephants (basically throwing bananas at them), feed the adult white tigers (throwing chunks of meat at them...no we did not do that) and feed the giraffes, just to name a few things.

They had about 15 giraffes in this large meadow area.  Only two or three were over at the balcony eating the leaves we bought.  Abigail was brave, but the giraffe was greedy and basically grabbed the leaves out of her hands. 

 Nora and Calvin were a little more scared, but both had a lot of fun feeding the giraffes.  Notice that Betsey is not pictured here.  I am scared of dogs, let alone big giraffes.  Look at that huge tongue! I'm not going near that thing!

 They were helping to breed and raise baby white tigers in the zoo as well.  We got to see these toddler cubs.  They did have a time when you could hold them and play with them for a price, but we missed it.  Abigail was very, very sad about that.  I think she is planning on working for the Guangzhou Zoo when she gets older just so she can play with the baby tiger cubs.

 This little guy was one of three tigers (one regular and two white) that were only about 2 weeks old. It was really interesting to learn more about them and Nora left the zoo determined to be a veterinarian when she grows up.

The pandas were also so beautiful, and, like I said, we saw a ton!  I really loved walking through their panda exhibit and just being amazed by how many pandas we saw.

After the zoo, we went to the circus that they have on the property as well.  It was amazing and we were all blown away by the incredibly performers.  They had a guy shooting out of a cannon at the end!  They had a trampoline act, divers, trapeze artists, people who performed on a huge hamster wheel, and some animals as well.  We loved it!  It was a successful weekend and we will definitely be heading to Guangzhou Zoo again.