Friday, January 18, 2013

沒辦法

沒辦法 (Traditional characters) literally means "no way to do" and is heard a lot in China, normally when you ask someone to do something they should be doing anyway. In reality, it just means that the person saying 沒辦法 is too lazy or wants a kickback.

There's an article in The Nanfang about zoo patron abusing animals at the Shenzhen zoo:
Zoos are supposed to be designed to protect people from animals, but sometimes they need to work the other way around.

Only two crocodiles are left alive of over a dozen that were placed in Rural Grand View Garden, a zoo in Shenzhen’s Guangming New Zone, Shenzhen Evening News reports. The cause of their death? Visitors throwing stones at them and polluting their habitat with garbage.

Visitors, particularly children, have been unimpressed by the hibernating beasts.
A journalist who visited the zoo this week reported that, as crocodiles hibernate during the winter, a lot of visitors have been shouting, spitting and throwing things at them to make sure they are alive.

Because the manmade lake in which they lived was full of garbage thrown by visitors, staff from the zoo went in to clean it this week but discovered that only two were still alive.

The zoo has issued warnings about such behaviour but staff say they have little power to stop it, for some reason.

I can just hear the chorus of 沒辦法s being said at all levels of zoo management. This is stupid. The answer is very simple... kick out anyone caught throwing crap at animals. No appeals, no refunds. When I go to the San Diego Zoo, I don't throw stuff at the animals. First, it a horribly wrong thing to do, but I also know that I'll get called out by other zoo patrons or forcibly ejected from the zoo.

I've only been to the Chengdu zoo and thankfully I didn't see dead animal exhibits.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

did you see the photos of the guys throwing snowballs at the lions at the Hangzhou zoo? the poor lions were bracing for impact of the flying snowballs. they should be able to dodge them like W/Bush with the Iraqi shoe-thrower