Beijing Zoo
The Beijing Zoo was built in 1906 and opened to the public in 1908 with an area of about 10 hectares and a few humble pavilions to house the animals. At tha

t time only several dozens of species were shown such as lions, tigers, leopards and monkeys. Now the Beijing Zoo covers an area of about 50 hectares. The animal houses and enclosures, with a total floor space of 40,000 square metres, include those for pandas, elephants, brown and polar bears, tigers, hippopotami, rhinoceros, antelopes, giraffes and reptiles. More than 6,000 animals of over 500 species are on show. Among them are giant pandas, golden monkeys, addaxes, tigers from Northeast China, elks, yaks, precious birds and gold fish. Also on show are rare animals from various continents, such as hippopotami, zebras, giraffes. Chimpanzees, lions and antelopes from Africa, parrots from South America, birds and kangaroos from Australia, polar bears from the Arctic, bisons from Europe and Asian apes.

About the panda

One of the most famous mammals in the world, the giant panda is meek and looks like a bear. With the exception of its shoulders, its limbs and the rims of its ears and eyes which are black, this lovable animal is white all over. Statistics show that China now has only approximately l, 000 giant pandas living in the wild, in some remote mountain areas of Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces.

Zoological research has proved that giant panda came into existence 600,000 to 700,000 years ago. Subsequent drastic changes in the climate resulted in deforestation which threatened its existence. The panda used to be a ferocious carnivore, but with environmental changes, it gradually became accustomed to a diet of mainly bamboo. As its natural habitation shrank, its numbers decreased, and the panda itself became docile.

To protect this rare animal, the Chinese Government has established 10 nature reserves in places where pandas are found: eight in Sichuan, one in Gansu and another in Shaanxi.

In 1955, giant pandas were exhibited in the Beijing Zoo. In 1978, by artificial insemination, the female giant panda Juanjuan gave birth to twins, one of which survived. Chinese pandas now symbolize the friendship between the Chinese people and the people of other countries. They have been sent to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Japan, the United States, France, Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany, Spain, Mexico and other countries.

Giant pandas live in humid and dense bamboo groves in mountainous areas at altitudes ranging from 2,000 to 4,000 metres. They are afraid of living in extreme weather conditions and make their lairs in tree holes or mountain caves. They seldom live in groups and eat bamboo leaves, sprouts and shoots. They mostly mate in April and May and give birth in autumn, with one or two cubs in each litter and occasionally three.

Lugouqiao (Marco Polo) Bridge
Lugouqiao (literally the Bridge over the Reed Ditch) has been made famous by at least three historic events: Marco Polo’s description, Emperor Qianlong’s inscription and the outbreak of the War against the Japanese Aggressors. Officially the bridge was called the “Lugou Stone Bridge”, and it was built completely of white stone and looked majestic with a total of 485 stone lions lined on the balustrades of both sides. Apart from minor maintenance repairs made during subsequent dynasties, historical records show that it underwent a major restoration in 1689 after two arches had been washed away by floods. It was on that occasion that the river was renamed Yongding (Eternal Stability), but the name of the bridge remained Lugou.

Marco Polo, the great Italian traveler, saw it towards the end of the year 1276 during his tours in China under the Yuan Dynasty. In the book of travelogues bearing his name, which came out years later, Marco Polo gave a detailed description of it:”… a very great stone bridge… For you may know that there are few of them in the world so beautiful, nor its equal … It is made like this. I tell you that it is quite three hundred paces long and quite eight paces wide, for ten horsemen can well go there one beside the other … It is all of grey marble very well worked and well founded. There is above each side of the bridge a beautiful curtain or wall of flags of marble and pillars made so, as I shall tell you … And there is fixed at the head of the bridge a marble pillar, and below the pillar a marble lion … very beautiful and large and well made.” This description earned the bridge its name, Marco Polo, in the Western World. However, Marco Polo may have suffered a slip of memory when he gave the number of arches of the bridge as 24 instead of the 11 that it has always had.

Incidentally it may be interesting to note that Marco Polo called the bridge “Pulisangin”. This is because, as some scholars point out, the upper course of the river Lugou or Yongding is the River Sanggan, and the river itself may have been known at the time as Sanggan or Sangin. As for “puli”, it came from Persian word “pul”, which means bridge. Therefore, Pulisangin was an international coinage for the “bridge on the Sanggan River” – a name highly indicative of the amount of intercourse between China at the time and countries to her west. Almost from its very inception, namely in the Mingchang period (1190-1208) of the Jin Dynasty, the bridge was listed by travellers and men of letters as one of the “Eight Scenic Spots of Yanjing (Beijing)” under the descriptive title “Lugou Xiaoyue” or Moon Over Lugou at Daybreak (The Morning Moon Over Lugou Bridge ).