Friday, June 14, 2013

Běijīng: Pandas!

Tuesday, 23rd April, 2013.

The Great Wall and pandas – two highlights in one day!

The Běijīng Zoo is over a hundred years old, and until the 1950s was called something rather romantic like “The Garden of a Thousand Animals”.  Or it might have been ten thousand.

 

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The zoo is home to many rare animals, including this very pretty red-crested ibis, native to China.

 

It is also, of course, home to the panda, of which I took about a thousand pictures.  Here are a few of them:

 

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As we were leaving the zoo, there was a great crowd of people around the enclosure of the peacock, who was strutting about proudly showing off his beautiful tail feathers.  I learned later that the Chinese consider it very lucky to see a peacock showing its feathers – that’s why so many of the people were holding their children up for a good view.

As for me, I was feeling so lucky to have seen the pandas – and everything else we have seen on this wonderful trip.

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