First Tiger Day in Hunchun

On November 13, a Chinese town Hunchun, located along the boundary with Russia and North Korea, picked up the baton from the Primorsky region of Russia and celebrated the first in its history Tiger Day ecological holday. Alexander Vrisch of Phoenix received an invitation to the holiday from our colleagues of Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS-China) and became an eyewitness of the increasing interest of the Chinese people in restoration of this rare predator in the wild nature of China.

Despite a recent snowfall, about 500 residents of Hunchun of different age, dressed up in tiger, deer, hare and bear and other funny contumes, were in hight spirits and marched to the central square of the town, where they were greeted by mayor and other representatives of the local administration. The holiday organizers invented a nice logo – tiger hugging a big neart – and produced many souvenirs with tiger symbols.

“Hunchun” hotel hosted an exhibition devoted to anti-poaching work, fight with illegal traffic of tiger parts, and also to Amur tiger research projects in Hunchun nature reserve.

Accidental Russian tourists who happened to be in the town for Tiger Day, liked it much and expressed their enthusiasm in interviews to Chinese media. Looks like a new tourist itinerary comes into being – “to Hunchun for Tiger Day”. It is noteworthy that Vladivostok celebrates this holidays each September for a already decade. We hope that our local tour operators will finally realize that this is a great peculiarity able to draw foreign guests to the city.