Welcome to The Beijing Zoo axn-stock

Welcome to The Beijing Zoo Information Page.

Here you will find all you need to know about the natural history of the zoo.
Learn about the geology, trees, mammals, birds, or other plants and wildlife of the area.

The zoo grounds originally housed an imperial manor during the Ming dynasty, that became part of the estate of the general Fuk'anggan during the Qing dynasty. In 1906, the Imperial Ministry for Agricultural, Industry and Commerce established an experimental farm, which held a small menagerie. The Viceroy of Liangjiang, Duanfang, purchased a batch animals from Germany and deposited them there. The animal collection attracted great interest when the farm opened to visitors in 1908. Empress Dowager Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor each visited the zoo twice. The farm was known as the Wanshouyuan or the "Garden of Ten Thousand Beasts".

Among the historical buildings at the zoo is Changguanlou, a Baroque-style country-palace of Empress Dowager Cixi, designed by a French architect and built in 1908. It remains one of the best preserved Western-style palaces in China.^[1]

After the Qing dynasty was overthrown in 1911, the zoo became a national botanical garden during the Republican period. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, many of the zoo's animals died of starvation, and some were poisoned by the Imperial Japanese Army.^{[citation needed]}Only 13 monkeys and one old emu survived the war. In the 1930s, with French aid, Lamarck Hall, named after the botanist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, was built at the experimental farm and housed plant research.

After Beijing became the capital of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the city government renamed the Beijing Agricultural Experimentation Center the Western Suburban Park (西郊公园) and began gradually rebuilding the zoo. In 1952, national leaders Mao Zedong, Zhu De, and Ren Bishi donated their war horses to the park.

The park was renamed the Beijing Zoo in 1955. The zoo sent staff to study zoo management in the Soviet Union and Poland, and began to trade animals with Eastern Bloc countries - Burma, India, Indonesia, and Japan - to expand its collection. Leading Chinese universities also established a research presence in the zoo to study animal behavior and to breed endangered species.

The zoo's development came to an abrupt halt during the Cultural Revolution as zoo staff were purged, research work stopped, and contacts with foreign zoos were severed. In the 1970s, as China forged diplomatic relations with the Western bloc, the zoo received animal gifts from the Australia, France, Mexico, Nepal, Spain, Sri Lanka, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The zoo also organized a four-year mission to Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania, which brought back 157 species and 1,000 animals including and aardvark, African elephant,baboon, giant tortoises, giraffe, Grant's gazelle, oryx, ostrich, Thomson's gazelle, wildebeest, and zebra.

During the 1984 Summer Olympics, the Beijing Zoo sent a pair of giant pandas, Yingxin and Yong Yong, to Los Angeles for an exhibition. In 1987, Yong Yong and Ling Ling went on exhibition at the Bronx Zoo.