Beijing Zoo

Brief information

Beijing Zoo is laid out not as a set of cages, but as a classical Chinese garden into which enclosures and pavilions have been integrated. Among artificial flower beds and natural thickets, small groves, meadows, a little stream, lotus ponds, and hills appear. That is why here it is important to look not only at the animals, but also at how they are fitted into the garden layout.

The place began in 1908 as the Garden of Ten Thousand Animals. After the founding of the PRC, it was reconstructed and called the Western Suburbs Park, and in 1955 its current name became established. This turn helps one read the territory differently: the former garden foundation did not disappear, but became the framework for a zoo with rare animals of China and species from other continents.

What to notice first

It makes sense to compare three types of visible elements: garden sections, pavilions, and specialized enclosures. The stream, lotus ponds, and small hills show the old logic of the park-garden; the pavilions and larger structures show how a zoological exhibition was added to it. The monkey enclosure, panda pavilion, lion and tiger enclosures, and elephant pavilion are named as separate buildings, so the animals here are presented through architecture, not only through open grounds.

A separate sense of scale is set by the Beijing Aquarium, opened in 1999 and described as the largest in China. Next to it, the principle of expansion is especially noticeable: the zoo includes not only land animals, but marine ones as well. The reptile enclosure works in a similar way on a smaller scale: more than one hundred species, including crocodiles and pythons, turn one section into an independent concentration of rare forms of life.