‘Saddest’ polar bear lives in a Chinese mall
IN A shopping mall in southern China, a polar bear named Pizza paces past murals of icebergs in his glass enclosure. He shakes his shaggy head under artificial lights. He crouches by an air vent to sniff the outside world.
All are distress behaviours, say Chinese animal welfare advocates, who on Tuesday called on Zhu Xiaodan, the governor of Guangdong Province, where Pizza lives in an aquarium at the Grandview Mall in Guangzhou, to move the bear to a more appropriate environment. Pizza has become known as “the world’s saddest polar bear,” the advocates, from 48 organisations, wrote in an open letter to Zhu.
Hundreds of animals are housed in small enclosures over several floors of the mall, including arctic wolves and beluga whales.
The activists say Pizza’s plight is part of a disturbing trend in China: exhibiting wild animals in malls to attract customers as more people turn to often cheaper and more convenient e-commerce.
At a news conference in Beijing on Tuesday, representatives of four of the animal welfare groups showed reporters photographs of an elephant used to sell cellphones outside a mall on the outskirts of Beijing and sea lions offered for interactions with shoppers who spend about $75, at another mall in Beijing. A “mall zoo” similar to Grandview is under consideration in Shijiazhuang, in Hebei Province, they said.
In Beijing, squirrels, parrots, llamas and goats, as well as domestic animals such as cats and dogs, are sometimes displayed in cages or glass enclosures in shopping malls.
Pizza is popular with shoppers, according to reports in the Chinese news media, with thousands of people visiting on peak days to take selfies and knock on the glass.
Wild animals like polar bears require a large natural habitat to maintain their physical and mental health, said Wendy Higgins, a spokeswoman for Humane Society International.
“Their environment is so unique. They’re such wide-ranging animals, and they start to decline quite rapidly in captivity,” Higgins said. “Pizza spends every single day on his own with nowhere to hide, just subjected to people banging on the glass and taking photographs,” she said.
Qin Xiaona, the director of the Capital Animal Welfare Association, said that criticism by the mall management, which has accused the activists of doing foreigners’ bidding, was an insult to China’s people and culture.
“They say, ‘You are using a Western point of view’ in order to oppose us,” Qin said. “But we can’t forget that we have a tradition in China of ‘respecting heaven, caring for animals.’ ”
“Because of economic competition, we’ve regressed,” leading to the widespread abuse of animals – and people – in recent decades, she said. “We want to revive our tradition.”