A Chinese restaurant, Wanhui Tower in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, is drawing serious criticism for offering a luxury afternoon tea experience including cuddling with lioncubs, along with alpacas, deer, turtles, and more. All for around 1,078\u202fyuan (~$150\/\u00a3124) per person. The restaurant profile on Dazhong Dianping, a popular restaurant listing app, shows a picture of lion cubs alongside other animals, such as deer and alligators. Several picture shows customers snuggling with baby lions.<\/p>\n
The restaurant sells limited tickets, only 20 per day. It also holds a license to breed and display two African lions, but close human-animal contact is prohibited under local regulations. An investigation has been launched by authorities following criticism by animal welfare groups like PETA and Humane World for Animals. They called the practice unethical, exploitative and dangerous for both the baby animal and their patrons.<\/p>\n
There were mixed reviews in the Dazhong Dianping application. One woman’s review reads, \u201cI can pet a cute little lion in a small shop! \ud83e\udd81 It\u2019s called Simba and looks so good. There are staff to guide you, so you don\u2019t have to worry about safety issues!\u201d<\/p>\n
While another one posted a negative review,\u201cThey\u2019re putting profit above consumer safety \u2013 it\u2019s way too dangerous,\u201d<\/p>\n
Peter Li, a China Policy expert for animals, told Reuters,”Exploiting wild animals for selfies and marketing gimmicks is not only appallingly bad animal welfare, it\u2019s also potentially risky for customers.\u201d According to Reuters, the restaurant authorities said that the lion cubs are cared for well by special staff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Chinese restaurant, Wanhui Tower in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, is drawing serious criticism for offering a luxury afternoon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,4433,4436,4435,66,4434,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-3422","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-chinese-restaurant","11":"tag-chinese-restaurant-wanhui-tower-lets-you-cuddle-with-baby-lion-for-1078-yuan-per-person","12":"tag-restaurant-in-china-lets-you-cuddle-with-baby-lion","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-wanhui-tower","15":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}