Today I went to the Panda Research and Breeding Facility and the Chengdu Zoo. The panda place was a huge area of beautiful lush greenery with large green areas for the animals, who looked pretty happy and healthy . The giant pandas were playing only about 3 yards from where I was standing. The lesser, or red pandas were all sleeping up in a tree the first time I saw them, but I came back in about an hour and they had come down from the trees and a chinese family was throwing them treats (I have not seen any "don't feed the animals" signs in China) so these creatures got as close as three feet away.
The zoo was pretty much the opposite of the panda center. Animals were in small cement cages and didn't look very happy at all. I did get a closer look at monkeys and other exotic creatures than I ever had before, but seeing them so miserable takes away from the pleasure of it. Perhaps the worst examples were the beautiful giant cats, leopards and such, pacing cells the size of my old dorm room. They even had a polar bear on display with no shade in 80 degree F heat. It was mildly amusing to see that the gorillas had trained people to throw food at them, and I was fascinated by the ' oversized webbed footed hamsters' (I don't know what they really are because there wasn't an english name by them).