shénzhēn dóng wù yuán

A big lion about a story high marks the entrance to the Shenzhen Animal Park. Along the sides of the entrance road, statues of animals pose with plaques telling what they are. The English is misspelled: gira ffe, hippopo tamus, and greate pan da. The entrance is under an archway created by two giraffes’ heads meeting. As we walk under the giraffe heads and through the turnstile, two elephants that have monkeys on their backs and birds on their trunks come into view. To the right, a panda restaurant gapes at us and to the left, horse drawn carriage drivers call to us, “ni yao ni yao ni yao ma?” I reply, “women xiangyixiang,” (We will think about it). After a long conversation with one of the drivers, we decide to pay for a carriage.

Around the first bend, a crane as tall as my dad honked at his fellow birds to leave. Monkeys swung from trees on an island in the middle of a lake full of pelicans . As a mocha-colored monkey turned around, a baby monkey clung to its pelvis. After many exclamations and pictures, we moved on. With lemurs to the side, we arrived upon a bird not unlike an ostrich, with a few slight differences. It was a little smaller and its all black body with a red head had a crest. The bird looked like a dinosaur with its massive bony crest. Common pheasants, mikado pheasants, Chinese pheasants, and red pheasants all peeped in unison. An exclamation from the other side of the carriage summoned us and we ran over to see this bird.

Driving past the peacocks to some more bird cages, we saw the smallest deer in the world, the pudu puda. Some odd gray birds that were very jumpy ran away in fear, while the crowned pigeon retained its regalness. This bird, a blue bird that has a smaller version of a peacock tail on its head, is very valiant. With a massive trumpeting, the elephants came into view. I wish that we would have been at ground level to see these giants. Our being above these massive animals, made them look like horses. After getting thrown around in the carriage, we came upon the giraffes. I always expected these animals to have massive necks but these giraffes were small. After the giraffes, we drove past yak hill, ibex-land and then the zebras. Sofia took some wonderful pictures. We sauntered past a hippo and fed some fish.

Four minutes later, we went hamster balling. Crawling into a massive balloon-like cylinder, all I can do is run, run like a hamster, run like a human, crawl, any way to keep the cylinder moving so I don’t get hit by other people. I tried not to hit the black swans on the way too. For five minutes, all I could do was run, fall down, and laugh. Then the stall runner pulled me in and I crawled out feet first.

The horse cantered pass the monkey stalls where monkeys sell stuff on the street to Penguin Island where three sorry looking penguins were alone. Then the driver strained the horse up a hill and into a space where six red, raccoon-like creatures brawled playfully. These ninjas were the lesser pandas. After several minutes of discussing how to buy one in the U.S. for a pet, we left and went on to the exit. Goodbye from Shenzhen, over and out.


Photography by Sofia Adams