Pandas!

Soooo while in Beijing, we went to the Beijing Zoo to see those black and white bears that like to eat bamboo and are occasionally good at kung fu. And it was a similar feeling to seeing snow for the first time. Because it's something I've seen thousands of times on TV, computer and books but had never ACTUALLY seen. But I concluded that they are definitely cute.

I wasn't too impressed with the condition of the zoo however. The exhibits seemed dirty and not taken care of, and there was even some misidentification of popular animals like tigers and lions. It's possible that the zookeepers had put the wrong animals in the wrong exhibit. One exhibit had signs with information and pictures of lions, however the exhibit was a couple of tigers. Its weird because I have even seen a couple of English books (made in China) teaching the word "Cheetah" but with pictures of leopards. And when I asked a friend about it she didn't know they were two different animals. In her defense though, they don't have Animal Planet here.

I was also surprised by seeing all these adults and children all knocking and pounding against the mirror of pretty much every exhibit. I know kids do that because they are young, and haven't fully developed the ability to look from another person's viewpoint or imagine how others feel. But an adult should know that banging against the wall of an exhibit where an animal lives is wrong. Don't do it! But anyways..... let's not turn this into a "blah blah feelings blah blah emotions" kind of blog...