Beijing Zoo

Beijing Zoo (Beijing Dongwuyuan) is a national tourist attraction. Every year it is visited by more than 7,000,000 foreign and local tourists. The zoo is located in Xicheng district in western Beijing. It covers an area of 90 hectares and is the largest in China, having the richest collection of animals among all zoos in the country. It is also the first zoo in China open to the public. Beijing Zoo has close ties with more than half a hundred zoos in China and the world. Here you can see animals living in different parts of the world.

Beijing Zoo was founded in 1906 under the rule of the Guangxu Emperor of the Qing Dynasty and was called the Agricultural Experimentation Center. It was opened to the public in 1908. The zoo was built on the site of the former Leshan and Ji gardens and the Guangshan and Hui’an temples. At the time, the zoo, which covered an area of 15,000 square meters, had more than 100 species of wildlife of 80 species. These animals Minister Duan Fang bought in Germany for the Dowager Empress Cixi. Over the years, the name of the zoo changed several times. In 1950 it was Xijiao Park, and in April 1955 it officially became the Beijing Zoo.

Since then, Beijing Zoo has preserved many buildings from the end of the Qing Dynasty: the main gate, Changguanlou (Great View Tower) in the northwest, Changchun Hall and three other buildings.

The Beautiful View Tower is the only remaining Western-style temporary imperial dwelling in the country, in which Empress Cixi and Emperor Guangxu briefly lived. After the 1911 revolution, Sun Yat-sen made several speeches here. In 1954, the tenth Panchen Lama lived here when he participated in the first session of the First National People’s Congress. In 1912, the Minister of Forestry and Agriculture lived in Changchun Hall. The Song Jiaoren Memorial Tower was built behind this hall, but only the base remains.

Other relics, including the Yilu Pavilion and the Sunfeng Luoyue Balcony, stand next to the hill of lions and tigers, while the Frosty Flowering Pavilion (Huifangxuan), Binfengtang Hall (now a restaurant) and Peony Pavilion stand behind the Big Panda House. There is also a monument to the Four Victims of the 1911 Revolution.

Now the zoo has about 600 species of animals, and their total number is more than 7000. There are more than 30 pavilions to accommodate animals, as well as the Beijing Aquarium.

The most important sections of the zoo are: House of the Giant Panda, Monkey Hill, Mount Medvedev, Lions and Tigers Hill, Water Bird Lake, African Zone, Giraffes Vollier, Golden Monkey House and others. In a two-story amphibian and reptilian aviary, visitors can see the inhabitants of the Yangtze River: alligators, crocodiles, turtles, snakes and pythons.

Each year, the zoo spends a lot of money to introduce new animals and upgrade existing enclosures to better recreate natural habitats. In 2003, the Popular Science Hall was built, where knowledge about wildlife is taught with the help of modern audio-visual tools and living representatives of fauna.

Giant Panda

Perhaps the only animal worth visiting Beijing Zoo is the giant panda. It is one of the most famous mammals in the world. Statistics say that now in China in the wild live about 1,000 giant pandas in remote areas of the provinces of Sichuan (Sichuan), Gansu (Gansu) and Shaanxi (Shaanxi).

Studies show that the giant panda appeared 600,000 to 700,000 years ago. Subsequent profound changes in the climate led to a decrease in forest areas, which became a threat to the existence of pandas. Initially, the panda was a carnivorous animal, but gradually with the changing environment began to switch to a bamboo diet.

The giant panda lives in humid dense bamboo thickets in mountainous areas at an altitude of 2,000 to 4,000 meters. She avoids extreme weather and makes her den in tree hollows or mountain caves. They rarely live in groups, eating bamboo leaves, roots and branches. Pandas are mating in April and May, and will be born in autumn with one or two cubs in litter, rarely three.

With the decline of panda habitats, their numbers have decreased, so to protect this rare animal, the Chinese government has established 10 nature reserves: in the east of Sichuan province, one in Gansu, and the rest in Shaanxi.

The giant panda was first introduced at the Beijing Zoo in 1955. In 1978, as a result of artificial insemination, the panda Juanjuan gave birth to twins, one of whom survived. Chinese pandas symbolize friendship between the Chinese people and the people of other countries. They were sent to Korea, Japan, USA, France, England, Germany, Spain, Mexico and other countries.