We spent about 40 minutes in the post office this morning, sending some of the bulkier things home. We managed the whole process without speaking to anyone, which was quite impressive, although a lady did ask us, in English, if she could help with anything, but we didn't need her. So we went to the zoo, instead. We took the bus from right outside the hostel, and it stopped right outside the zoo.

The park itself was much larger than I was expecting, and much emptier, too. The only large group was the bunch of soldiers that were taking pictures of one another, possibly the same group that were in the People's Square the other day. We had to walk quite a way before we saw any animals at all, and the first ones were giant goldfish in clear glass tubes of water in a sculpture park. There was also a pretty glass waterfall, but that wasn't an animal. Most of the fish were the ones that have bubbly eyes or frothy hair styles, and one poor fellow whose bulgy tendrils kept floating in and out of his mouth. We were mainly here to see a giant panda, though, so we carried on. There was a lot of parkland, and I thought that somewhere with so much room for people would surely bode well for the animals, but unfortunately, that wasn't the case. The vultures, on the way, had a large iron cage that looked like one of those dome-shaped ornamental cages but, like all zoos everywhere, not nearly enough space to spread their wings. Then we tracked down the panda house, surely the pride of the zoo. It was a school-green-tiled concrete room with a big glass window and a children's slide in it. A baby panda, who, judging from the family tree on a display board, was about five years old, lay on his back, legs in the air, chewing bamboo. The room was wet and dirty and I think, living in a small dark room like that, the little guy really had no reason to want to continue his species. Occasionally he'd come up to the glass and everyone at the zoo, all bunched round the cage, bashed on the wall to try to get his attention. He just lumbered off to try to find a quieter corner.

The usual crush continued and we were constantly being elbowed out of the way. The panda was very, very cute and did look exactly like the cartoons, especially when he sat down to eat. At times he just looked like a man in a panda suit. I got angry with the crowd though, because each of them thought that by hitting the glass the animal would stop what he was doing and wave to them or pose for a photo, like the Kitkat advert. We left them all to it.

Shanghai zoo was rather depressing. The tigers probably had the best enclosure, with grass and a couple of fake trees, and were far enough away from the visitors to avoid being hit by all the rubbish thrown at them. The other big cats, however, were not so lucky and every other animal (apart from goats and zebra, who had a bit of dry earth) lived in small concrete and iron cages. The leopards, bears and jaguars had about ten feet by fifteen feet of concrete paving to pace around and no toys, tree stumps, water bowls, food or anything to entertain themselves.

There were four elephants, too, in concrete houses that were actually indoors. A small baby, a medium-sized baby, a female, and, impressively, a bull elephant. They had nothing to do, but were at least given a handful of straw to sweep from side to side. I have issues with male elephants ever since I saw a documentary called 'Spy in the herd' where a hidden, remote-controlled camera managed to capture some rather impressive footage of the animals, and this guy brought it all back to me. It's just not right. Especially when he waves it about like another trunk. I think it has a little grabby hand on the end too. It's just wrong.

The only things that seemed to be enjoying themselves were the hippopotami, who were able to wallow in their green pools quite happily. Someone once asked me what noise hippos make and I can now say it's a bit like a baritone pig, which is always a useful bit of trivia! There were two, in adjacent cages and they seemed to be reassuring one another that they were still there. They have cool, sealable nostrils, too! The zoo was closing by this time and as we left, one of the hippos had managed to rest his head on the guardrail round his pool and had opened his mouth for whatever junk food people wanted to throw into it. I saw lots of cakes and biscuits go in, and I'm hoping the plastic bottles were meant for the water, not the animal.

The bus home went an entirely different route and we only just worked out where we had to get off. The hostel people recommended a restaurant round the corner, and we tried it. The menu was entirely in Chinese, and once again Mikey's list of words came in handy. They didn't have any of the things we had written down, but two dishes arrived and one, at least, was very tasty. The other was a plate of slightly tandoori-style ribs that were cold and very fatty. But it was interesting, anyway.

Internet was still too slow to be much use. There was a travel programme on television that showed a whole lot of things we missed in Xi'an.