Chinese tourists watch in horror as Siberian tiger kills their bus driver

A bus full of tourists visiting a Siberian tiger breeding base in Harbin, China got a more impressive display of what the tigers are capable of than they had bargained for.

When their bus got stuck in the snow, their driver got up and went outside to check how bad the damage was – something that violated park safety rules. As he tried to enter his bus, one of the parks Siberian Tigers attacked him and dragged him into the forest, as the bus passengers watched in horror.

When park officials arrived at the scene, the set off firecrackers to scare the tigers away, but by then it was too late – bus driver Jin Shijun was found dead in the woods.

The attack took place at the Dong Bei Hu Siberian Tiger park in Harbin, China. The park is home to over 1000 tigers, many of which were bred in captivity. Back in 2009, the park called in local police to kill two of its tigers when they pounced on a zoo worker.

Still, one can hardly blame the tigers for this incident – you’d expect most tiger park bus drivers to understand the dangers of the animals, and stay inside their bus when things go wrong.

Celebrate Chinese New Year, Hong Kong style

For anyone not of Chinese descent, Chinese New Year is a confusing concept. Travelers who visit Hong Kong during this important festival are likely to have questions. What’s the significance? How do you celebrate? But fortunately, Hong Kong is the perfect introduction to this most significant of Chinese celebrations. Hong Kong’s unique blend of familiar Western amenities and authentic Chinese culture make it the perfect place to begin your Chinese New Year experience.

Understanding and enjoying Chinese New Year in Hong Kong depends on three distinct activities: the main rituals, the typical foods and the public celebrations. Each of these activities is tied to longstanding Chinese traditions, dating back centuries, and are designed to ensure good health and prosperity in the year ahead. Experiencing the festival in the dense urban environment of Hong Kong adds an additional layer of fun, allowing you to enjoy the festivities on a huge scale.

Ever wanted to learn more about Chinese New Year? Don’t know the Year of the Tiger from the Year of the Ox? Let’s take a closer look at how to celebrate in Hong Kong and how to get started. Keep reading below for more.The Rituals
To truly understand Chinese New Year, you need to get familiar with the festival’s unique rituals. The best place to get started is at Hong Kong’s Chinese temples, where citizens head to pray for good luck, burn incense sticks and have their fortunes told. Hong Kong’s most famous temple is Wong Tai Sin Temple in Kowloon, which sees nearly 300,000 visitors during the New Year festivities.

Upon arriving at Wong Tai Sin, take a moment to soak in the temple’s solemn atmosphere with worshipers bent on their knees, the air thick with sweet incense smoke. Grab a tube of fortune sticks from the table near the entrance to inquire on your prospects for the year ahead. Ask a question, give the cylinder a shake, and wait for a stick with a number to fall out. Then bring your number to one of Wong Tai Sin’s numerous fortune tellers to have it interpreted. Good or bad, the answers you receive are meant to help guide your decisions in the year ahead.

The Foods
Chinese New Year is a time heavy with symbolism. This is particularly true of the holiday’s typical foods, all of which are laden with spiritual significance. Everything that’s eaten during these important days is intended to bring prosperity, happiness, longevity and good fortune in the months ahead.

A good place to begin your culinary exploration is at Hong Kong’s daily markets. In neighborhoods like Wan Chai, you’ll find a flurry of activity in the days leading up to the festivities, as market goers pick up supplies for the traditional reunion dinner. Butchers wield cleavers like madmen, chopping, hacking and yelling. Giant carp thrash about in bubbling fish tanks. Typical Chinese New Year foods are everywhere. At the dried goods stalls you’ll find a variety of New Year specialties like chocolate coins, dried oysters and Chinese Sausage. At the produce stalls, take your pick from New Year favorites like juicy mandarin oranges or crunchy melon seeds.

Each New Year food has been specially chosen to bring good luck in the New Year. For instance, the Cantonese word for dried oysters (ho see) sounds similar to the words for “wealth and good business.” It’s eating that’s as much about symbolism as it is about the taste.

The Events

The celebration of Chinese New Year in Hong Kong happens on a scale and size like nowhere else. The city’s seven million residents come out in force to enjoy a variety of festive activities surrounding this annual event.

On the first day of the New Year is the annual Hong Kong Chinese New Year Parade, packed with colorful floats, wild drumming, manic dragon dancers and throngs of spectators. The parade is a microcosm of Hong Kong’s frenzied street life, awash in a flurry of sensory delights. Make sure to secure yourself a spot a few hours early and watch out for pickpockets, as the crowds can be intense.

On the second day of the New Year, the city celebrates with a massive fireworks display over Victoria Harbor. Few places in the world can boast of such an impressive light show set against the city’s towering skyline. Whether you choose to watch from the harbor or from on high at The Peak, you’re sure to have some of the best seats in the house.

Celebrating Chinese New Year in Hong Kong is much like the city itself – an overwhelming array of sensory pleasures and confusing rituals. But with a little background info from Gadling and a spirit of fun, you’re guaranteed to enjoy all it has to offer. Kung Hei Fat Choi!

3 chinese students, 48 tigers, and 72 hours to kill

The Qinling Wild Animal Safari in the Xi’an, Shaanxi province of China, recently held a unique promotion, recruiting three people to spend 72-hours living inside a small cabin located at the center of a tiger enclosure. The recruits were tasked with observing the behavior of the 48 big cats that prowled the grounds just outside the thin walls of the cabin, recording their interactions 24-hours per day.

Officials from the safari park say they received more than 650 applicants from brave souls looking to spend the night in the tiger pen. They ended up selecting three students, ages 24 and 25, who were given laptops, digital cameras and notebooks to record their observations, and this past Sunday, they were locked into the small, ten square-meter cabin to begin the process. Sunday also just happened to be the start of the Chinese New Year, marking the beginning of the “Year of the Tiger”

For it’s part, the cabin wasn’t exactly luxury accommodations. It had no electricity or heat, and contained no furniture what so ever. It was packed with straw to help keep the students warm however, and it allowed them to get up close and personal in making their round-the-clock observations of the cats, without disturbing their natural patterns. In a sense, it served as a duck blind for the three days they were in the enclosure.

The students managed to survive their stay inside the cage, and were let out on Wednesday. Their observations will now be used as part of a larger study on the behavior of tigers in an attempt to better understand how they live in the wild. Some experts think that there may be as few as 50 tigers still left in the wild in China, and during the Year of the Tiger, they hope to raise awareness of that fact.

Seven Endangered Species You Can Still See in the Wild

There is no doubt that we are fascinated with wildlife. We love to watch diverse and interesting animals, preferably in their natural habitats, and we’re often willing to travel to remote places, sometimes at great expense, to see them. If you enjoy the kind of travel that allows for these kinds of animal encounters, they you’ll want to check out BootsnAll’s list of the Seven Endangered Species You Can Find Outside a Zoo.

The article not only lists the creatures, it also gives us the best locations to go and see them for ourselves, including some brief insights into what to expect out of the journey. For instance, if you want to see polar bears in the wild, you can expect a long flight, or 40-hour train ride, to Churchill, Canada, on the famed Hudson Bay, where every October and November, the bears gather, waiting for the bay to freeze so they can continue on northward. The other creatures, and locations that can be found, include: sea turtles in Barbados, tigers in India, rhinos in Tanzania, elephants in South Africa, pandas in China, and gray whales in Mexico.

As the article points out, in the era of ecotourism, these trips to see these rare animals can be a force for good. Conservation efforts can receive funding from our visits and an increased awareness about the plight of the animals helps to prevent poaching and protect natural habitats as well. Just be sure to travel with a reputable guide service and make sure you pack out everything you pack in.

So did they leave anything off the list? I was a bit surprised to not see the mountain gorillas that we wrote about last week, on there. They’d certainly make my top list. What’s on yours?

Thai Beer & Formaldehyde, Plus Other Beer Myths, Exposed

When I was backpacking around Thailand a couple of years ago, there was a persistent rumor (often mistaken for fact) that Chang Beer and its competitor, Singha, contained formaldehyde. Apparently, that’s why they tasted so good, and also why we felt so awful the next day (right, because the fact that we had 12 of them had nothing to do with it.)

According to one of the locals, the government took the formaldehyde out of the beer, only to be met with outrage from its loyal drinkers because it just didn’t taste the same without that toxic preservation agent in it. After an instance of gut rot that I blamed on the formaldehyde, I decided to stay away from the Thai beer.

Turns out that’s all a load of hooey — there’s no formaldehyde in the beer, so I needn’t have avoided it so fervently. Other beer myths that you might have heard while traveling? That Guinness tastes better in Ireland (I still believe it does, if only for the atmosphere) and that Corona contains Mexican urine (apparently, this one was started by Heineken.)