Turning Tigers into Wine

[Randy W]

in the SCMP

 

Why 1,800 tigers are in a rundown China park: to be made into wine

Failing attraction in scenic Guilin, a tourist destination in southern China, is a pitiful front for a sinister trade in tiger bone wine, writes George Knowles

http://www.scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/486w/public/2016/04/21/red-door-news-12mar16-fe-fashion-135-entrance-to-xiongsen-tiger-park_copy.jpg?itok=-Qu2dLud

 

 

The venue looks for all th world like an outdated wildlife park on the brink of closure, but employees say the park will soon be moved by its tycoon owner, Zhou Weisen, to a site 8km away that is three times the size. What's more, rather than declining in line with the falling visitor numbers, the tiger numbers are booming and the park now claims to be home to the world's biggest captive population: more than 1,800 animals. According to the most recent data, globally only 3,890 tigers exist in the wild.

If it relied on the 40 yuan (HK$48) admission fee from its sprinkling of guests, the park could not feed more than a fraction of its animals and could never break even. But the Xiongsen Bear and Tiger Mountain Village doesn't profit from entertainment. The grim circus is mere window dressing to disguise the park's true purpose - the breeding of big cats to supply a highly profitable trade in tiger bone wine, which is brewed in a vast underground factory some 300km away, in the Guangxi countryside.

When the tigers of Xiongsen die - be it from old age, illness or fights with other cats - they are taken to the factory, in Zhou's hometown, Pingnan, where their skeletons are steeped in huge vats of rice wine for up to eight years, park insiders say. The liquid is bottled and sold for between 320 yuan and 4,000 yuan a half litre.

 

 

[Randy W]

These pictures are from our visit there, or to a similar one in Guilin, in 2006.

 

The sticks could be used to feed apples to the bears.

 

 

Of couse the fence provides all the protection these tourists needed.

 

 

 

 

Feeding time. But they hauled the carcass away before eating.