I visited yesterday, and because my visiting experience was so extraordinary for a Western traveller (even for one who has lived in China for four years), I thought I might walk you through it. The zoo is a recent build, and is situated about 20km outside the city centre. In order to reach it without using a private car I found there was a bus, the 313, that left from South Park and took about an hour. The zoo opens at 10.30 (everything opens late in Xinjiang because the province is on Beijing Time even though it's about two and a half time zones to the west). A new friend wanted to join me so I suggested we meet at the bus stop at 9.45 in order to avoid being early and having to wait outside the zoo. When we arrived at the bus stop we found that the 313 was a shuttle bus, not a regular service, and that the first bus wouldn't leave until 11.00. But wait!, that is only on weekends; on a Thursday the first bus is at 12.00...... Apparently there are three buses, at 12.00, 1.00, and 2.00. Unbelievably, we were told that there is only one return bus, at 4.00. Even if you take the first bus that only gives you three hours at the zoo; we were assured this would be, and I quote, 'plenty'. The mystery of how three busloads of visitors might fit into one return bus was never solved and I suspect actually on weekdays there is only the one bus going out, but I can't confirm this. So, we returned at 11.30, to find a short queue forming. By twelve there were enough people that one started to wonder if we all going to fit. A woman in uniform made brave and semi-successful attempts to keep the queue in order. The bus arrived and, because the official stopping point was inaccessible (...), had to park halfway down the line of people. "Let the front of the queue on first!" shouted the lady. Somewhere a celestial scribe added a new entry to history's great acts of futility. Fifty people pushing to get on a bus takes approximately four times as long as fifty people boarding the bus in an orderly manner, especially when whenever one person made it to the coin slot they would pay for four who then had to be retrieved from the crowd before the process could continue, however eventually we were all on, most of us standing, and we set off. Soon into the journey we left the main road and drove the rest of the route on a very picturesque, but very bumpy dirt track. Quite the workout for the knees....We arrived at the zoo car park and headed for the ticket office. Before we entered we checked to confirm the time of the last bus: 3.30, not 4.00! Better get a shift on then! I put my bag into the x-ray machine at the entrance, but of course as soon as one of the on-duty security guards saw me he pulled me aside. Things are a little bit different here for foreigners so we went back outside and walked across the square to the zoo's police station. Inside were ten officers waiting for exactly this situation. I had to go through the little interview: Where are you from, where are you staying in Urumqi and so on. All my passport details were recorded; this bit is always fun because I have three different China visas in it, only one of which is current and valid, and my last Mainland entry stamp is not on a page that corresponds to that one. An additional 'amusing' stumbling block is that the exterior is quite scuffed from use and so it's not uncommon for officials to assume it's an Irish passport not a British one. The officers are almost always polite, which helps to take your mind off the automatic weapons. And the shields and spears. With my status now confirmed (as what?) I returned to the ticket office and bought my ticket. The zoo costs ¥70 to enter but if you don't have your own car you have pay an additional ¥30 for the internal bus that takes you from the entrance to the exhibits. We then proceeded to the bus pick-up point. Most people who had taken the 313 had already got on a bus which had now left. We had to wait another ten or so minutes for the next one. By the time we boarded it, it was 1.30 and we had two hours before the bus back to Urumqi left.... The visitor bus is actually not a terrible idea. It takes you past a simple but large savannah exhibit, where you can briefly get out to view the giraffes, Grevy's zebra, eland and brindled gnu. It then wends its way through a huge desert drive-through, which seemed to only hold llama (or guanaco) and kulan (one seen) The setting for the zoo, with mountains in the background and hills rising on all sides is incredible. In many directions you can't see any boundary, presumably the barriers are beyond rises, but in others a bright green fence that sits on the ridgeline itself was unnecessarily obtrusive. Still very good all told. Within the desert enclosure there is a large paddock for ostrich; this was massively over-stocked. Private cars can stop here but the bus doesn't. The road then heads into and up an adjoining valley which holds all the walking exhibits. You disembark at the head of it, stroll down, and then a separate shuttle takes you back to the entrance from the bottom. All in all a pretty good system I think. The top of the valley is devoted to large predators. A central walkway goes through and above a series of exhibits for lions, tigers, wolves and brown and black bears. These are all rather good; although central viewing may reduce privacy the exhibits are much larger than is typical in China. The enclosures are attractive and the backdrop is still fantastic. Frustratingly, high walls on the walk way in the big cat section give way to low ones for the bears, encouraging feeding even though signs forbid it. There are also some smaller enclosures holding cheetah and wild dog (seemingly signed as hyaena, although these may well have been unseen in an adjacent exhibit) Music is piped through speakers at the beginning of each new area; I'm not a big fan of this, but I have to admit that Nightwish was a refreshing choice for the African Lions. Nothing evokes the Serengeti like Scandinavian operatic metal! After the predator what looked to be an awful polar bear exhibut turned out to be two adequate penguin exhibits. This is next to a HUGE tent-style walk-though aviary, with several small aviary complexes inside. The smaller aviaries hold pheasants, hornbills, parrots, cranes and pigeons, with nothing being very interesting. Signage was often absent. The main aviary is currently totally wasted on some waterfowl and peacocks, as well as at least one free-ranging emu. A low-point here was seeing parents fondly watching children chasing geese around the land area. It probably took until after 2.30 to reach this point, and that was with pushing hard and not lingering at any exhibit. Tucked behind the aviary, but still visitor accessible, are an abysmal series of small cages that contained foxes, more wolves and other unfortunate inhabitants. It's so frustrating to see this time and again in China: a new zoo will deliver a series of relatively impressive exhibits and then just smack you in the face with something that looks like it's straight out of the Qing dynasty. Jogging swiftly on we came to a primate section that varied from uninspired to poor. Collection was very China-typical: a selection of baboons and macaques, golden snub-nosed monkeys, ring-tailed lemurs, capuchins and squirrel monkeys and then a decent array of other African primates. On the ridgeline we could see a geodesic dome aviary containing vultures; we decided to skip this in the interest of not missing the bus. This was a mistake as the main path actually goes that way; we had to double back to see a row of medium-sized, but rather dull, cages for leopards, before the final exhibits back on the valley floor. These were a generous common hippo pool with no obvious land area, and an African elephant exhibit with awful viewing through very obtrusive bars. The young inhabitants will definitely outgrow this small outdoor paddock. We ran on and reached the internal shuttle bus at 3.18, it soon left and thankfully we were back at the entrance a few mins later, with time to pop to the bathroom before the 313 left at 3.30. We boarded the bus, and it was easy to get seats because there were far less people than before.......We waited, and waited, and waited. At 3.55 everyone else arrived on another internal shuttle and we set off at 4.00 pm. Would you believe me if I said I wasn't really surprised? On the bus I noticed some girls who had befriended me on the outward journey now had three pet turtles. I do not like it when zoos do this. I like it even less when the turtles have painted shells. The only final thing of note is that on the way back to the city we had to pass through a police checkpoint. Everyone had to disembark to have passports checked again, unless you looked arbitrarily young or old in which case you were fine. Frankly I was just happy it wasn't only me holding the whole bus up. So here endeth my report. In conclusion, Urumqi Zoo is decent enough, with good, bad and ugly exhibits. It feels like a missed opportunity, because with really very little effort it could be made into a good zoo, and with proper investment in the right hands it could be one of the world's most beautiful. Reports of wild camels unseen notwithstanding, it has zero focus on the indigenous wildlife of Xinjiang, and this is a bit ridiculous in my opinion. A zoo nerd who is in Urumqi for other reasons would find a visit worth their while, but no-one should be travelling to see this specifically. Whilst I am living proof that it is possible to cover the zoo in two hours, even three is not enough to actually enjoy what is on offer. I imagine on the weekend, although the bus leaves earlier, so many more locals would be making the trip that you might well find you couldn't get on at all. A private car offers a better experience, but you'd have to hire a driver because I think it's very, very unlikely that foreigners are currently allowed to drive themselves around Xinjiang. This would add considerable expense to the visit, but not, perhaps, a prohibitive amount. Although I can't say I didn't enjoy my visit, the lack of attention payed to visitor experience, at least of those who use the bus option, is truly shocking, even by Chinese standards (which means making certain allowances for the sheer quantity of people who visit attractions and the cultural expectations of those people with regards to queuing and gaudy tourist crap). I think paying customers deserve better, and if another zoochatter ever visits I hope they will report that what is still, perhaps, a developing zoo has indeed developed in this regard.
I'm wondering how well this scene is envisioned by those people who haven't been to China and seen how bus-boarding takes place there...
Thanks for the entertaining and informative review. I'm guessing that 50% of the write-up didn't even include a discussion about animal exhibits, but the added 'flavour' of your visit made for a great read. Oh, the perils of public transportation...
Off the top of my head: Ostrich, Emu Hornbill (probably Papuan/Wreathed) Reeves, Silver and Golden Pheasants Peacock Red-crowned and Grey-crowned Crane Crowned Pigeon Vulture (Griffon?) Red-breasted Goose (and other unrecorded waterfowl) At least two unknown Bird of Prey species (suspect one to be Golden Eagle) Alexandrine Parakeet (other parrot species including several cages of macaws) I'm sorry I can't do better than this; at the point I went through the aviary complex I was literally not stopping at enclosures because I was so pressed for time.
