Exploring Tourist Narratives about the Animals in the Shanghai Zoo

Based on ethnographic research conducted in the Shanghai Zoo during the first quarter of 2021, this report will explore how tourists' interpretations of the zoo animals are shaped by sociocultural contexts beyond the zoo border, which is, in turn, triggered by the zoo settings. The research involves 20 hours of participant observation, three short interviews with some visitors encountered in the zoo, and three more extended interviews with some friends who had visited the zoo with the author. This research confirms that tourists in the zoo interpret the zoo animals through broader sociocultural contexts beyond the zoo border based on their expectations and experiences of how animals are presented in the zoo. It is further argued that the tourists' desire to interpret the animals is related to the search for authenticity necessitated by encountering both the familiar and unfamiliar. The analysis of these interpretations focuses on reproducing meanings through one's familiar experience in scientific, cultural, and living domains. Built on existing research on the socioculturally inscribed meanings about animals, the search for authenticity in nature, and the projection of personal experience on animals, this report looks specifically at the role of zoo settings and the interplay of the "familiar," "unfamiliar," and "real" in the Chinese sociocultural context.