This is Beloved’s third trip to China. Last summer he came for a week to teach at the University here but didn’t get to do much sightseeing or traveling outside or off campus.
One destination he did get to experience was the Harbin Siberian Tiger Park, about 30 minutes outside of the city. I say outside but in reality it is surrounded by high rises and roadways, from our understanding the city just simply built up around this park and the tigers remained. Beloved made a comment about tigers running loose in the city which made Bumpo’s eyes go wide. The thought of huge Siberian tigers running alongside city buses is an image even I thought was too magical.
Mr. Wu, our host’s hired driver, picked us up at the apartment in his minivan and drove us to the park. Mr Wu is a character. While we were waiting for our host at the University he bantered loudly with a truckload full of young men, seemingly landscaping staff, and it was comical. I’m not sure if even knew them, it involved a lot of him barking loudly at them and them nodding their heads slightly and looking at him a bit scared.
Mr Wu’s job was to make sure we got into the park okay, and that the park didn’t overcharge us as foreigners to get into the park. He did this by cutting to the very front of the line while we stood at the back and barking at the ticket agent, with a lot of agitated hand gestures and motioning back to us. ‘Us’ being the abashed white foreigners who were looking away off in the distance trying to avoid any reconnaissance of the boisterous fellow… who was just doing his job.
Got into the park and instantly got into a short line that led us to a large bus. A bus unlike any I’d ever seen
The tour guide then started loudly giving instructions on what to do while riding on the bus into the tiger park. I have no idea what she said, as she was speaking quickly and constantly throughout our 15 minute tour. I’m wondering if it was something like the various signs posted on the inside of the bus. “Do not stick your fingers through the wire mesh.” “Tigers can smell fear.” “Do not lean against the wire mesh.”
The bus rode through a succession of high rusted barbed-wire fences, complete with guard stations (which were empty) and the courtyards were weed-covered and empty as well.
As we passed through the second or third gate I said loudly “Welcome…to Jurassic Park” which got a laugh from my husband.
Here is that same person helping to feed the tigers. :)
And here is a few short videos from the day.
Harbin Siberian Park has over 700 tigers living within the confines of the park. It is the largest preserve of Siberian tigers in all of Asia, if not the world. The tigers were in a word stunning, unlike any tiger I’d seen in a North American zoo. These were massive, about the size of a Shetland pony or a small car, with their paws being about the size of a human head. They were allowed free access to roam throughout most of the park, which is about 356 acres. The park allows has an area for other exotic cats, an albino leopard, jaguar and a male and female lion couple.
The lioness was pregnant and the male was ensconced nearby, ignoring the idling bus completely and murmuring quietly to his mate. (I think it was his mate… it could have been another lion’s partner. I had watched a documentary on lions which showed a lion attacking another lion’s cubs and killing them, allowing the lioness to go back into heat sooner and giving him a go at the cub-less mother.)
I wondered if that was why he was kept separate from the female. Hmmm.
The bus rattled through heavily rutted dirt roads, heaving back and forth threatening to bash our unsuspecting heads into the thick wrought iron bars soldered inside “for our safety”. I wondered aloud how they determined at which depth the bars needed to go back into the interior of the bus, was it from personal experience? How long were a tiger’s claws?
Trying to share the pictures to give any scope to how gorgeous these creatures are is wasted. There’s no scale to compare them to, no human beings anywhere wandering throughout the park. Their fur was beautiful in exquisite patterns of black and oranges and creamy white. And thick, so thick you could lose your hand in the depth of it. Beautiful eyes of yellow or green, with the cubs eyes usually pale blue. Exquisite.
After we toured through the park on the bus (Beloved noticed a large convex mirror posted on the side of the exit gate that reflected the area beside and the behind the bus to make sure no tigers tried to escape alongside the vehicle) the bus deposited us at a green tarp-covered entrance.
Beloved said this is where the walking tour and the preserve really started, when the raised concrete walkways were fully covered with the same wire mesh in arches covered with the same green tarp. You could look down into the preserve, seeing where the tigers were resting under all of the trees or in the dirty shallow ponds. We could tell the tigers had been fed because a duck was paddling about- somewhat placidly,- but its head was in constant pivot looking from one tiger to another. There were no ducks harmed in the tour. Not today.
So Yes here is the ugly reality of the tiger park. Tigers are not just cuddly little stuffed animals. They are carnivores. They don’t eat grains or corn or rice. They eat meat. They eat chicken and cow and ducks. And from the size of these massive beasts they eat a LOT.
Scattered about the park are these metal chutes placed high into the wire mesh of the covered walkways. These chutes transport proteins.
Proteins in the form of live ducks and chickens, portered about by an elderly Chinese woman with grey frizzy hair and a fanny pack bulging with yuans. The birds are carried in large plastic bins with a metal grate over the top and one little padlock keeping them inside (see picture above). She puts her torn office chair over the top of the bins as she trundles her cart about the park, making loud clucking noises which the tigers would sometimes come running for. At one point she handed Bumpo a piece of raw chicken which she held with tongs and then led Bumpo to hang the chicken into the tiger area. The tiger ate from the tongs.
If I had not seen for myself the absolute bloodlust my own two domesticated cats have for winged creatures I would have flicked open that padlock and let those fowled creatures go.
But where? Just like Red Bird Farms back in the US of A, these Chinese birds are bred specifically for eating. They wouldn’t know the first thing to do with their freedom, and would be easily caught back and shoved into the plastic bins…this time with more force I am afraid.
“Fallen world Fallen world this is a symptom of a Fallen world” I kept chanting to myself. Animals eat each other.
So yes my friends we fed some big cats yesterday. As I posted on my Facebook “We sent four chickens over the Rainbow Bridge today at the Tiger park. It was kind of awesome.”
But it wasn’t easy and not without some remorse.
Were we exploiting what was an already an innate sense of greed in all of us? Or were we simply participating in the pattern of life…
So no not everyone in the family participated. Some of us just took pictures.
The skinny chickens were shoved into the chute where the tigers were waiting, and when the chicken mysteriously appeared from the end of the chute it was killed instantly. By one if not more than one tiger, which leapt to meet the chicken mid-flight.
Its flight into oblivion. Its short-winged flight over the Rainbow Bridge.
So yes, half a dozen tigers would chase the winning tiger (Winner Winner Chicken Dinner) who would end up all by itself and for the next 30 minutes or so tear the bird apart. Afterwards it would mash its glorious face into the
feather detritus of the dead bird and sort of make muffled sounds.
Fallen world I would say. A fallen, fat content gorgeous thick beautiful sinful fallen world.
After we caused enough excitement with the tigers, we came open a circular tarp-covered ring where there was a wooden gate and a man in fatigues and woman with yellow gloves speaking rapidly. I saw a little boy being led to a wooden bench in the ring where he was handed a tiger cub. His mother was chattering animatedly as she took pictures of him.
I said “Waaaitttt a minute…can we hold these babies?” The woman at the gate held up 50 yuan and I couldn’t get the bills out fast enough.
The ‘handlers’ kept telling us to hold them under their front legs and I just couldn’t hold him like that. He was about 20 lbs of dense weight, and he mewled slightly and snuffled as I held him. I held him up and kissed his head and nearly burst into tears at how gorgeous he was. Fat little tiger baby.
When our time was up we all quietly left the room and that is when the reality of the day started to well up.
Tears started to flow about the plight of the tigers and their habitat, and how these cubs were probably never going to see the wild. But the gift was how Life was being preserved, and how we could gain an appreciation first-hand of how stunningly gorgeous these animals were. Not man-made, not genetically-engineered or synthetic, but how texturally and vibrantly and perfectly these predators are.
I’m not sure what the answer is, I have always been a conservationist in the sense that hunting helps keep disease and the unhealthy at bay, but seeing these animals displaced by an ever-burgeoning human population still causes physical pain. And if this apex predator is given a small moment of joy in catching an animal beneath it in its food chain by catcing out of the air as it travels out of a metal chute than so be it. I’d let them do it again in a heartbeat. I will never look at a tiger the same way again.
The answer isn’t an easy one, and the solution isn’t written in English. It’s for the Chinese to answer, and my hope is that they will continue to respect the tiger and maintain international demands on the sanctity of their life.
