The person who recruited me told me the pay wasn’t so great, but I was still pretty set on it. In reality, there weren’t all that many people who wanted to do the work. That job wasn’t as you might imagine, with tons of applicants competing for the position. Then someone told me, “There’s a wildlife rescue center you can work at,” so I went. I felt I had to go work with animals, do something I actually liked. I stayed at that company for not quite six months before I quit. Whenever I had a spare moment, I would go on my phone and watch videos about animal care. Work was torture for me: as soon as the day started, I was already looking forward to it ending. During that period, my only consolation was volunteering at the Beijing Zoo.Īfter graduating from college, I started at a biotech company, researching antibodies-something I had absolutely no interest in. I settled by picking something that sounded somewhat animal-related.īut I regretted this as soon as I started college, because that field was primarily concerned with the microscopic world-there’s actually no contact with animals at all. I studied biotech in college, in part because I couldn’t test into other departments. I can’t picture the scene very well anymore, but I remember clearly the fact that I waited so long at the zoo just to see a hippo’s tail. I saw its tail: It was wrinkly, with a bit of hair on it. I had a sudden thought: What did the hippo’s tail look like? So I ended up waiting and waiting by the hippo exhibit, just to catch a glimpse of their tails.Īt last, after four long hours, a hippo came out of the water. I remember one time I went to the Beijing Zoo to see the hippos, but they stayed submerged in the water the whole time and wouldn’t come out. There were tadpoles, lizards, kingfishers, as well as some bizarre-looking birds, like the hoopoe with its long, thin beak and large crest-quite pretty, actually. When I was little, I would go for walks in the park, where I encountered many kinds of animals. I grew up in Beijing, near Taoranting Park. As an adult, Chen’s job fulfills precisely many of our childhood dreams: He is an animal rescue worker at the Hongshan Zoo in Nanjing. He kept whatever species he could in a city apartment, and outside of school, he could occupy himself for hours at parks, live markets, and zoos, developing a keen eye for observing animal behavior. When other children were going through the familiar motions of catching tadpoles and petting dogs, the young Chen was already camped out in bookstores engrossed in The Complete Guide to Caged Poultry and Tortoise and Turtle Care. He has had a lifelong obsession with animals. Today’s narrator is Chen Yuelong, who was born in the 1980s and grew up in Beijing. Many of us have taken an interest in animals as children or tried raising them at home: if not chicks, ducklings, kittens, or puppies, then it might’ve been goldfish or tadpoles.
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