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A rodeo with ostriches

By Erik Nilsson ( China Daily ) Updated: 2015-03-21 07:33:18

A rodeo with ostriches

The park hosts a forest of animatronic dinosaurs.[Photo by Erik Nilsson/China Daily]

The insane mingling of more than 200 activities - many offbeat on their own and even weirder together - makes the place crazy fun.

It's a neophile's paradise.

Visitors to the Kiss Animals Petting Zoo can feed and caress bunnies, Chihuahuas and Pekinese.

The adorable critters skitter among jars bobbing with various fauna's preserved fetuses. A dead weasel dangled inside an empty bottle hanging from the caging of the pigeon, pheasant and geese enclosure beneath a peach tree heaving with fruit and red lanterns when we visited.

We fed the birds. Wings blasted toward the chow.

The flurry made the embalmed weasel swing like a pendulum.

Kids found the lifeless creatures more fascinating than frightening. (They're allegedly for educational purposes, though not even labeled.) Tikes afforded them little heed and instead devoted attention of the more animated animals.

A guinea pig colony scuttles through an underworld beneath the petting zoo. Flickers of fur flash between tunnel entrances in pits exposing intersections.

A nearby archery zone stacks bows and arrows on a table next to bunnies.

Rest assured, the rabbits are for petting. Foam targets are for shooting.

(We asked.)

These are activities to enjoy if you're not zorbing (tumbling downhill or over lakes in transparent balls), bungee jumping or rock-climbing.

Or picking fruit. Or grass-skiing.

Or watching two piaper-mache imperial bureaucrats saw a third in half to techno remixes of Eye of the Tiger in Ghost City.

That's the haunted house across from the main kids' area. (Not advisable for children, despite being as corny as the adjacent maize field.)

The play area is slung with rows of kids' hammocks next to two-dozen obstacle courses for adults to cross the river. Some kerplunk into the lilypad-studded waters.

Visitors navigate the park in self-driven electric karts or four-person bicycles. (Of course. How else would you get around such a vast and diverse weird-scape?)

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