Tiger Park!

Throughout the two weeks we are here, we have several days where we have no games or morning skates. Today was the first of those days. Despite having the day off, we were still really busy all day. We had a meeting this morning at 10:00 to go over some things with the group that have been occurring during the games. Then we all got lunch (which for me consisted of rice and noodles today) and at noon we gathered in the hotel lobby to go to tiger park. Tiger park is one of the things Meghan and Leah told me we HAD to do while in Harbin. It is a huge preserve about an hour outside of Harbin with over 700 lions, tigers and ligers.

Because part of tiger park is outside and it was -7 when we were leaving we all decided to break out the red clothing they gave us. So everyone (except Stacey because she is too cool for all of us) put on the shoes, ski pants, vest, parka and hat. That stuff is actually surprisingly good quality and kept us all pretty warm. We loaded into the vans and, like always when we travel by car, almost got into multiple accidents along the way. I think I'm starting to get used to that because I just don't think twice anymore when we come within centimeters of another car or person. On the way out to tiger park we drove by the ice and snow festival, which from a distance looked amazing. We are planning to go see that on our next day off. When we pulled in to tiger park we drove by all of these goofy looking cartoon tiger statues. This place, even though it is home to over 700 huge vicious animals, is made to feel like an amusement park. We all got in line to buy tickets and figure out what else we wanted to purchase. The crazy thing about tiger park is you have the option of purchasing live animals - cow, sheep, chicken, duck, etc. They will then drop the life animal in front of your bus for the tigers to eat. I go back and forth with how I feel about this - part of me thinks it is totally wrong but then the other part of me says they are going to eat anyway, I ought to take this opportunity to watch nature up close and personal. Well two of the guys who had tagged along with us decided that they wanted to get a cow. A cow costs 1500 yuan - that is a little over $200. They started a collection up amongst us girls and between all of us we gathered enough money to buy a cow. Unfortunately, when we went to actually purchase the thing the lady told us that they did not have any cows today. We're not sure we believe her because several of us could have sworn we heard a moo at one point but you just don't know - that is one of the problems with the language barrier. Instead we bought some other meats that they would feed to the tigers. After we all got our tickets we headed inside the little shop area to wait for our bus. Inside there was a big souvenir stand and a bunch of Chinese people. They all wanted to take their pictures with us. This is pretty common here. Many of these people have never seen any western looking people so we are somewhat of a circus act but this group was by far the most aggressive when it came to taking pictures. So while we waited for the bus our group had our pictures taken with at least 10 different Chinese people.

After waiting about 10 minutes, we were all told to go out and get on the bus. It was about the size of a small charter bus and held about 25 people. The windows had safety bars all around them but the could still slide open. We drove through the entrance gates and as soon as we pulled in you could see several tigers that were within 20 feet of our bus. The tigers are HUGE in person. You really can't appreciate how big and powerful they are if you just look at then in a zoo. Here you can see them in a somewhat natural habitat. The preserve was sectioned off into several parts, one with huge male tigers, one with females, one with ligers and one with lions. The first part we entered was the male tiger section. It was here that a Jeep that was completely covered with a cage (tires and all) pulled up with our meat to feed the tigers. The driver opened his door, even though the tigers were within 10 feet of the car, and threw out several meat carcasses we had bought. The tigers immediately jumped up and went after the stuff. It was crazy to see them just attack this meat. I honestly can't imagine what it would have been like had we been able to get the cow. After the feeding we headed to the next section. The sections are kept separate by several walls of chain link fence. As we exited the male tiger section, a tiger followed our bus and snuck into the empty section before we entered the female section. This obviously wasn't supposed to happen because the caged Jeep immediately drove in and started to try to chase the thing back into the original area so they could shut the gate. You could see all of the females on the other side of the fence starting to get excited as well so we couldn't enter until they got this other tiger back. They finally got him to his area and we continued through the different sections. It was so cool to be able to get that close to these huge, powerful animals. Some of them I could have reached out and touched with my hand they were so close to the bus.

After we finished the bus ride (took probably about 45 minutes) we went down this huge caged walkway that cuts straight down part of the preserve. Here, there was a lady selling big meat scraps on tongs that you could feed to the tigers for 10 yuan (about $1.20). As you hold it through the fence the tiger jumps up, pulls at it and eats the meat. It was so scary when you have this giant tiger lunging at you - all you are hoping is that that chain link fence is strong. You can feel how strong their jaws are as they literally rip this meat scrap right from your tongs. It was absolutely crazy. One of the guys took a few videos of him feeding the tigers, I'm going to post them on my picasaweb just so you can get an idea of what this was like because words can't really describe it.

Finally after we were done feeding the tigers we headed back for the vans and left to go back to the hotel. After we got back here we all changed and headed to the boys rink to watch Korea vs Slovakia. After a pretty exciting game (Slovakia won 4-2) we headed back to eat dinner. While on the way to tiger park we found that there is a Pizza Hut about 10 minutes from our hotel. We debated going there for dinner but it was so cold and we were all pretty tired so we decided to just go back and eat at the hotel. That was a wise choice because for the first time I actually went up and got seconds at dinner. They had this baked chicken and peppers that you put over rice that was amazing. We all hung out at the dinner table laughing and talking until they finally kicked us out around 9:15. Now I'm getting ready for bed, we have a morning skate tomorrow and I am then working the late game again. This time I have Finland vs China. It should be a good one, I'm definitely looking forward to it.

Tiger park pictures are on my website - www.picasaweb.google.com/connolly.kate