Tianjin Zoo!

The zoo was an interesting experience. They had a lot of the pretty standard animals: bears, giraffes, elephants, lions, tigers, and a plethora of small birds, reptiles, and rodents. The main attraction was, of course, the pandas. They had regular pandas and red pandas.

This guy was my favorite.

He was huge.

Baby lamb playing with a stick.

And a lot of fun to watch.

People would throw some things at the bears to get them to fight.

The zoo landscaping was really nice. Lots of flowers and trees, but the animal exhibits were kind of sad. Almost none of them had trees or grass in them, and it was way to easy for people to throw things at the animals to make them move or interact some way. A zoo like this would not exist in the states, PETA would have a fit.

Besides the trees and flowers, the park itself seemed kind of run down. It looked like it was really nice when they first buit it, but have never kept up with any of the maintenance. They had some big tacky animal statues for decorations.

As we were strolling through the park, it started to downpour on us when we we were in middle of a courtyard, the furthest point from any shelter. So we booked it to the elephant house. Since the city is so polluted, it's acid rain. Every time it rains, it just feels dirty. It makes your skin feel sticky an gross, and if you get some in your eye it burns a little bit. It's not the kind of 'let's go out side and try to catch raindrops in your mouth' kind of rain.