Wildlife that is 'paw-etry' in motion

Since 2023, the zoo, in collaboration with organizations including Poetry Periodical, has been hosting a nature poetry contest on the International Day for Biological Diversity, celebrated annually on May 22. The contest invites poetry submissions from anyone who loves animals and nature. By 2025, the event had received over 200,000 submissions from people of all ages and backgrounds, from children to retired seniors. From the submissions, 52 poems have been chosen, each representing a weekend of the year.

Some poems are innocent and childlike, others are stark and somber. Some are intense, while others are gentle, says Xu Qiongyu, one of the book's editors.

"Together, they suggest a possibility: amid real plants and animals, we can create our own little paradise, allowing us to reconnect deeply with our wild, natural instincts," she says.

Hou Shuwen, a second-grade elementary school student, says that he wrote the poem Hongshan Moonlight Sonata because he wondered what the animals do at night when there are no visitors, using the Hollywood film Night at the Museum — where the exhibits come to life after hours — as inspiration.

Wu and Hou are representatives of the people who have contributed poems, and zoo visitors who take the time to appreciate all the animals, not just the "celebrity" ones.

They observe and write about everything, from the "crowd-pleasers" — pandas, Siberian tigers, and Asian elephants — to beetles, ants, and fireflies. Their poems capture the slow gait of giraffes, the rounded silhouette of koalas, meerkats sunbathing belly-up, lions lost in daydreams, kangaroos sparring, golden monkeys exercising, and the leisurely pace of red pandas, who seem to do just one thing a day. They also describe the intriguing face of the white-faced capuchin monkey "Dudu", which invites a second glance.

For Shen, these verses reflect people's deep affection for Hongshan and their love for the "furry kids". What makes the zoo so inspiring is that all the animals here live true to their nature. "They can be wild, playful, affectionate, and even a bit unruly. When each animal lives authentically, it forms a genuine spiritual connection with us," he says.

Zhang Yu, editor-in-chief of Yilin Press, says this book is a true "collective creation". "The authors of this book might include many of you here, as well as the zoo's staff members, since some content comes from the zoo's signs and slogans," he says.

"People contributed to this collective creation, motivated by dreams of a better environment and a more peaceful state of mind," he notes.

For him, this book is a way for ordinary people to express, in the simplest way, their message to the world: "I was there, I saw you, and I was moved."