The zoo and Chinese theater

This weekend I decided to stick around Hangzhou, sleep in, and see some of the main attractions in the city. On Saturday I went to the zoo with my host mother Meixue and a friend from Stanford, Nanette Le, who is also interning in the area:

Nanette, Meixue and I

The zoo, like everything else in China, was rather bizarre but a lot of fun. The animals were kept in mostly deplorable conditions (save the panda, who was living the life). I’m used to American zoos where the exhibits are large and you have to look for the animals in their expansive artificial habitats. This was not the case in the Hangzhou zoo; even the bigger animals like the tigers and lions were in small plexiglass boxes the size of bedrooms. However, this made things very easy for the zoogoers — in a short 100m walk you could see about 30 different animals!

Here’s some blue-chip photos from the trip:

a curious creature

"please get me out of here"

the deer slums

Lion, bear, and... vegetarian?

There were a lot of animals which you would never see in an American zoo due to their ubiquity in North America, like pigs, racoons, and a large collection of dogs:

the Chihuahua; a species on the brink of extinction

And of course, it would be a Chinese zoo without this bad boy:

Panda!

The following day, Meixue took Nanette and I to a Chinese theater. There were some outdoor plays, but the main attraction was an hour-long indoor performance. Luckily, the indoor play was more of a visual experience (i.e. there was no Chinese dialogue I had to wade through), and it was really something else. The actors often interacted with the rambunctious audience, and the stage was a crazy blend of electronics, laser lights, costumes, and water effects. It’s tough to describe it in words, so here are some pictures:

I’m used to quiet, reserved plays where the audience sits still and stays quiet (god forbid someone forgets to turn their phone on vibrate). In contrast, it was wild in the Chinese theater; people were constantly talking, smoking, drinking, and snapping photos. Awesome!

All in all, thanks to the great weather and good company, it was a fantastic weekend in Hangzhou. Luckily there is still a lot to see around here…

- Pu Anren