What Goes Under the Sun: Where bears and tigers are in abundance

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Where bears and tigers are in abundance

During my trip to Guilin, I had a rare chance to stop by an interesting place called Bear and Tiger Mountainvillage. As the name itself suggests there must be bears and tigers here. You are right. There are about 400 bears and 1300 tigers being reared here.

The bears and tigers at his place were originally reared for commercial purposes, that is tigers are killed to make Chinese medicine and the biles of bears are used to produce Chinese medicine too. However, since China joined the world organisation for the protection of wild animals, these animals have been banned from being killed for medicinal purposes. The owner then had a good idea and turned it into a park for tourists to visit so that the income can be used to feed bears and tigers here.

We were entertained to a show by bears and tigers in the ring. Both animals were trained to stand and walk. As for tigers they were trained to jump through a ring of fire too. Then came the show in the field where a parade of bears on their fore legs passed by us gracefully. One bear even rode one a motorcycle on a steel wire high up with his baby bear hanging below it.

I was not able to take photos while being here because my camera's battery went flat after I took too many shots in the Reed Flute Cave earlier in the morning. The photos shown here are from Thum Xinjing, an engineer who was on the same trip with me. With my request he emailed to me all the photos posted here. Hence I would like to thank him through this post. Thank you, Xinjing, for being so kind and helpful.