Hi, I will be visiting China in october (Shangai, Suzhou and Beijing) not specially do see zoos, but I have some free time and want to visit 1 or 2 zoos. Looking at the photos posted here its difficult to say some thing and I think there are more facilities around Beijing??? So can somebody give some advice of wich places are really interesting to visit? Thanks.
I would advise you to visit: 1) Shanghai Zoo and 2) Beijing Zoo. 3) one of several commercial wildife parks around these cities. Both city zoos are publicly owned zoos (as in State/Council). Shanghai Zoo is the most forward thinking zoo in P.R. China and most probably heavily into transition towards a naturalistic exhibit zoo (hence it is also popularly known as the Shanghai Animal Wildlife Park). Beijing Zoo is also slowly changing from a trad unnatural stale cramped Modernist animal exhibits towards more naturalistic enclosures. Being vast in area and with low investment on the part of City Councils towards development budgets (versus animal up-keep budgets and animal care staff wages) it is more of a challenge. There are some commercial establishments around both cities which could be deemed more open range type (versus more traditional Chinese zoo facilities). Lately however, the latter have come under severe criticism for animal welfare reasons (as lagging attendance figures have seen wildlife park management to cut into budgets for animal up-keep ...).
Although the condition of some animal enclosures will make you uncomfortable, Beijing Zoo is highly recommended, as it is the biggest zoo in China along with Taipei Zoo. Animals you can see in Beijing Zoo now include all three snob-nosed monkey species in China, Francois‘ langur, Chinese desert cat, giant and red panda, two subspecies of takin, red goral, white-lipped deer, centre-Asian red deer, black muntjac, Tibetan gazelle, kiang, Chinese monal, crested ibis, black-necked crane, Siberian crane, Chinese crocodile-lizard, Chinese cave gecko (Goniurosaurus luii) and so on. But Amur leopard, snow leopard, clouded leopard will be off-exhibit until next year because of the construction of new leopard house; Formosan serows haven't yet on display, I don't know whether they will on exhibit in this October; the otter pool and bat house are also closed to public now. I have not visited the Shanghai Zoo, but I know they have the largest captive population of red gorals (in fact it seems that in the world only Beijing and Shanghai Zoo have red gorals~~), and they also have the largest breeding population of Asian golden cats in China, along with white-headed langurs, Formosan macaques and south-Chinese tigers.
