Hangzhou Zoo
Forest-style animal park sharing a legendary tiger-clawed spring famed for brewing China's best tea.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Hangzhou Zoo follows a ninth century legend of two tigers whose claws are said to have opened Hupao spring in the hills south of West Lake, water later praised by the Qing emperor Qianlong and paired with Longjing tea as one of the two treasures of West Lake. It then jumps forward to 1975, when the zoo settled onto this same spring-fed slope, its animals descended from three traveling circuses nationalized in 1958 and shuffled between a temple, a park and an ancestral hall along the way. Listen for the real tigers pacing an enclosure on the very hillside where their mythical namesakes are said to have clawed open a spring.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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