Three-year-old African lion Zhuangzhuang was persuaded into an iron cage at a safari park in Beijing's outskirts Monday morning, embarking on a journey that will take him and eight other animal ambassadors to a distant land -- Afghanistan.
The Badaling Wildlife Park is donating Zhuangzhuang, his girlfriend Canny, a male wolf, a pair of brown bears, a pair of deer and a pair of white pigs to the Kabul Zoo as a gesture of world peace.
It is the first time for a Chinese private donation to be sent to a foreign country. The Badaling Wildlife Park is a privately-owned safari park feeding more than 10 species of wild animals, on 400 hectares of land, including 84 lions.
The idea, originally only to donate a pair of lions to Afghanistan, occurred to zookeepers in early February when they heard of the death of Marjan, a one-eyed lion in the Kabul Zoo, whose life was lived on the front line of the Afghan civil war.
"The real peace is the one in which animals live in peace," said Li Xiaoming, chairman of the board of the park.
He said his staff hope the donation will express Chinese people's call for world peace.
The park had originally planned to donate a pair of lion cubs as "Ambassadors of Peace" to the war-ravaged Afghanistan. However, when Abdul Basir Hotak, charge d'affaires of the Afghan interim government to China came to visit the two cubs earlier this year, he expressed the desire of the Afghan interim government to have more animals at the Kabul Zoo.
He mentioned in particular a lonely she-wolf that cries out for a companion.
The he-wolf sent along with Zhuangzhuang was the chosen bridegroom, said Li. It was called a "solitary cavalier" in the park.
Hotak told the benefactor that the rebuilding of the Kabul Zoo has been financed by organizations from the US, Germany and the UK. It has become an entertainment center in Kabul -- a city in need of diversion.
The zoo has hired a group of professional veterinarians, cleaned the lion house, and renovated water and sanitation facilities in the zoo. The animals from China will be well attended, he said.
The Xinjiang Airline Co. will fly the ambassador animals to Urumqi, capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, on different flights Monday night through Tuesday morning. From Urumqi on Wednesday, they will transfer to Kabul on a Turkmen plane rented by Air China Express.
(Xinhua News Agency September 30, 2002)
