I fell in love with pandas when Pat and I visited Chengdu’s Giant Panda Research Base, so it was disturbing to read about the horrible conditions the animals are kept in at our local Zhengzhou Zoo.
After the recent death of a 7-year-old female panda at the zoo, news reports said the area where the panda lived was covered with feces and the smell was “overpowering.’’
There were also reports that zookeepers had hit the panda to make it pose for pictures and that the animal had been fed corn cakes instead of its natural bamboo diet.
Zoo officials denied that the panda’s diet or living conditions contributed to her death, but said the cause – originally attributed to an intestinal infection — will be investigated. Another panda is still living at the zoo.
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With China’s once-booming economy slowing down, jobs are increasingly hard to find.
Almost 50,000 people attended a recent job fair in Zhengzhou, creating a winding, 330-foot “dragon’’ line waiting to get into an exhibition center. Similar crowds were reported at other job fairs in China.
China’s GDP grew 7.7 percent in 2013, strong by international standards but matching its weakest showing since 1999. And the growth rate could slow even more if the country follows through on plans to reduce reliance on the massive government spending that has spurred the economy for the past few decades.
My students at Henan University of Technology are well aware of the trend. They frequently express concern about their job prospects, worrying that they won’t be able to help out their mostly poor, rural families.
“Everyone is depending on me,’’ one student told me. “If I don’t get a good job, I will be a failure.’’
