Paws, claws and marking territory

As I felt the heavy paw on my shoulder, my mind went completely blank. It was a very sharp, firm grasp, and before I could react, animal trainer Chao Yuezhan had yanked me away from the cage as the other reporters screamed in terror.

I got away relatively unscathed although I could not say the same about my jacket. The hood had been torn to tatters. For about a day, my back ached so much that I thought I'd better see a doctor, but luckily the pain gradually faded.

Not the memory, however.

I had been talking to the trainer next to the tiger's cage and he had been saying how well trained his animals were. So what prompted the attack, or rather, what made Weiwei the tiger try to hook me nearer?

After I pulled myself together, my journalistic curiosity got the better of the scary situation.

"Why did it try so hard to touch me?" I asked.

Chao, the 31-year-old tiger trainer, had the answer.

"It was the red of your jacket that attracted his attention," he says, smiling. "Tigers are easily attracted to bright colors, especially red."

I carefully glanced at Weiwei. He was still staring hard at my jacket, which, I confess, made me want to run away. He was a very muscular, very big animal.

"Or maybe because you are born in the year of the tiger," he says. "And he just wanted to greet you like a friend. 'Pat pat and say hi'."

Personally, I liked the second explanation better, although Weiwei's enthusiasm was a little intimidating.

In the 20 minutes I spent watching the tigers perform and feed, I also learned another fact about them. They like to mark their territory, especially when they feel disturbed, and they do that by urinating. I was almost peed at until Chao shouted at me to watch out.

Our visit was about a week before the Spring Festival and most of the troupes in the village of circus owners were away performing. A week after the interviews, I was in the rainforests of Xishuangbanna in Yunnan province and we were taken to see some animals performing.

They were charging 50 yuan ($8) for a photo with the tigers and maybe the chance to touch them and give them a pat.

But I had already experienced that with Weiwei, and he didn't charge me a cent.

zhangyue@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 02/22/2013 page19)