Z.z. Z is for Zoo!

We went to the Suzhou Zoo today. OK. So if you are from San Diego – which has one of the best zoos, if not the best zoo in the world – Suzhou Zoo will seem small and rather sad. However, if you are living in Suzhou, it is a beautiful Fall day outside, you have already seen most of the famous gardens in town, you are looking for something new to do, and your son almost knows how to say “bear”, “lion”, and “monkey”, BUT has never seen said creatures … well … it’s a nice outing to go to the zoo.

The zoo is located on the North-East corner of the old city in a park called East Park (Dong Yuan). 10RMB ($1.25) admission to the park. Haga said there was some other sort of garden UNESCO Heritage for Humanity site in the park too, but that had a separate admission and I need a while before I’m going to be interested in going to gardens again. Outside the zoo in Dong Yuan park was standard Chinese garden park stuff: bicycle boats, shops selling lots of toy guns, remote controlled model boats, some stone bridges. This park also has bumper cars and a merry-go-round that did not look like a death-trap.

Most of the animal exhibits in the zoo were way too small, especially the lion and bear cages. Their was a monkey or sort-of orangutan cage that was big, but had no green stuff in side. Chinese people threw food at the animals and jumped up and down and shouted and clapped hands to get response out of them. ( FYI it is not good for animals to feed them this way because it messes up the animals diet and sometimes causes animals to get sick)

Still, Akiva had a good time and so did we. He also pushed his own stroller a long time, and walked from the entrance of the park to the zoo, so he fell asleep after an hour and we went home.