I returned about a week ago from spending two weeks in China for my job. Although I had a wonderful time, there were a few things I witnessed that gave me nightmares. One of them was the zoo in Beijing.
Some of my group wanted to see the pandas, so we were taken to the zoo. We saw the pandas who seemed to be fairly well taken care of, but when we went to see the monkeys, what I saw was mortifying. The monkeys (I'm not sure what kind they were) were living in a concrete pit filled with trash. There were dozens of monkeys: many babies and pregnant mothers. Every single one of them were suffering from what looked like mange. Many had very little fur left and those that did have fur were missing huge chunks of fur. The skin on their backs and stomachs were inflamed, and most (when they weren't playing with the trash) sat and scratched their itchy skin. Oh...it was so sad. Thank goodness, we got there late and the zoo was closing, so I didn't have to see many more animals (just saw a few very large birds living in tiny cages). It was so sad.
Does anyone know of international organizations who might be able to look into this? They sure had better get this taken care of before the 2008 Olympics...otherwise they will have a lot of angry Westerners on their hands.
Some of my group wanted to see the pandas, so we were taken to the zoo. We saw the pandas who seemed to be fairly well taken care of, but when we went to see the monkeys, what I saw was mortifying. The monkeys (I'm not sure what kind they were) were living in a concrete pit filled with trash. There were dozens of monkeys: many babies and pregnant mothers. Every single one of them were suffering from what looked like mange. Many had very little fur left and those that did have fur were missing huge chunks of fur. The skin on their backs and stomachs were inflamed, and most (when they weren't playing with the trash) sat and scratched their itchy skin. Oh...it was so sad. Thank goodness, we got there late and the zoo was closing, so I didn't have to see many more animals (just saw a few very large birds living in tiny cages). It was so sad.
Does anyone know of international organizations who might be able to look into this? They sure had better get this taken care of before the 2008 Olympics...otherwise they will have a lot of angry Westerners on their hands.
