Tiger Park and Ice Festival, Day 11, February 15, 2008

Today was a site seeing day with a little paperwork proof reading in the van while in transit mixed in. We started the day at the Tiger Park, which is a tiger preserve or tiger penitentiary depending on your perspective on such matters. It was both thrilling to see these beautiful Siberian tigers and depressing to see some of their quarters. There was an article in the China Daily, an English paper published here, we saw in which they reported they had started with 8 tigers and now have more than 800 of the animals. But this has led to concerns with inbreeding and even being able to keep up with feeding these beautiful animals. The paper reported that there are only 400 tigers estimated to be in the wild, 10 to 17 in northeast China and the rest in far eastern Russia. However, once back in the hotel we googled the park and there are many disturbing references about the park which we will not go into here except to say the tigers are beautiful but we are not sure we would ever go back if given the chance.

A less controversial stop was the Ice Festival later that evening. We will let the photos speak for themselves. It was amazing.

Andrea Zhi Bei had a very good day and we are feeling so incredibly blessed to be part of her life now. She has a wonderful personality and is so much fun to be with, giggling up a storm. She had a moment or two today, but there is so much stimulation all around her it is hard for her to know appropriate limits. The language barrier does not help us communicate them either. She no doubt is as frustrated by the communication issues as we are. We are feeling very guilty that we did not work harder on our Mandarin. We are after all the adults. She is a joy to be with though and we keep reminding her that “Wo YongYuan Shi Ni De MaMa” and “Wo YongYuan Shi Ni De BaBa” (“I will always be your mother” and “I will always be your father”). Ann did some quality bonding doing nails in the hotel room between site seeing trips.

Zhi Bei does seem to be warming a bit more up to David now. Once we got back from the ice festival Ann noticed a street vendor selling some socks outside of our hotel. Zhi Bei let David pick her up while Ann tried to hone some of her bargaining skills. We succesfully aquired some new socks for Zhi Bei.

Lion and Tiger?

The Ice Festival - Olympic Theme