A baby raccoon to stroke while you sip your skinny latte? Or a snake to coil around you after your cappuccino?
Forget dog or cat cafes, Shanghai’s animal cafe scene has expanded to include a wider — and more exotic — kingdom.
The fad in dining alongside all manner of species — from raccoons to pigs and reptiles — comes despite concerns fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic about the dangers of deadly viruses jumping from wild animals to humans.
Photo: AFP
There are dozens of animal cafes in China’s biggest city, with visitors helping to drive the craze by posing for photographs with the creatures and sharing them on social media.
Tucked away in central Shanghai, Raccoon Cafe is home to eight of the mammals. The biggest of them, weighing about 10kg, jumps up and down by a window, seemingly agitated by customers.
“I think it’s really cute,” said Qin Siyu, a 27-year-old professional volleyball player who found out about the cafe from a friend’s photographs.
Customers pay from 98 yuan (US$15) for entry, but it is debatable how much of the venue actually functions as a cafe. The raccoons’ behavior is too unpredictable for people to have hot drinks around them and the menu is limited.
The cafe’s owner, Cheng Chen, said that she had no first-hand experience of raccoons before taking over the establishment at the end of last year.
They can be aggressive, Cheng said, and she has the scars on her wrists to prove it.
The 36-year-old understands why some people might question whether it is fair for the raccoons to be kept in a cafe, eating dog food.
Cheng, who seems to have a genuine affection for the raccoons, is an animal lover, and has several dogs and cats at home.
She hopes the government would make it more difficult to own and breed such animals, to prevent them from falling into the hands of people who are less concerned about their welfare.
“Generally, there’s no special regulation. In fact, especially in China, the regulation for pets may be relatively weak,” Cheng said.
In another Shanghai animal cafe, snakes, iguanas and geckos delight the customers.
Owner Wang Liqun has 30 snakes, among them corn snakes and kingsnakes — neither species is venomous, but they can bite.
Wang is yet to have such an incident with a customer.
A visitor who gave only her surname, Tang, said that the cafe helps people to get over their fears.
“After coming here they will feel that it’s not what they thought and may find reptiles actually quite lovely,” the 27-year-old said.
However, Evan Sun (孫全輝), a scientist with World Animal Protection, said that he was “deeply concerned” about such cafes.
“Wild animals are having a miserable life in these cafes, enduring huge suffering and pressure,” said Sun, the charity’s wildlife campaign manager for China.
“The close interactions with wild animals not only fuel suffering and cruelty, but also creates a hotbed of diseases that could exacerbate the likelihood of zoonotic diseases’ emergence and spread,” he said. “Most customers [who] visit animal cafes are animal lovers, but they do not know that their consumption choices have such a negative impact to both wild animals and humans.”
Seven people sustained mostly minor injuries in an airplane fire in South Korea, authorities said yesterday, with local media suggesting the blaze might have been caused by a portable battery stored in the overhead bin. The Air Busan plane, an Airbus A321, was set to fly to Hong Kong from Gimhae International Airport in southeastern Busan, but caught fire in the rear section on Tuesday night, the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. A total of 169 passengers and seven flight attendants and staff were evacuated down inflatable slides, it said. Authorities initially reported three injuries, but revised the number
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
CHEER ON: Students were greeted by citizens who honked their car horns or offered them food and drinks, while taxi drivers said they would give marchers a lift home Hundreds of students protesting graft they blame for 15 deaths in a building collapse on Friday marched through Serbia to the northern city of Novi Sad, where they plan to block three Danube River bridges this weekend. They received a hero’s welcome from fellow students and thousands of local residents in Novi Said after arriving on foot in their two-day, 80km journey from Belgrade. A small red carpet was placed on one of the bridges across the Danube that the students crossed as they entered the city. The bridge blockade planned for yesterday is to mark three months since a huge concrete construction
RSS