Beijing Aquarium

Covering an area of 120,000 square meters, Beijing Aquarium is the biggest aquarium equipped with the most advanced facilities in Asia, and it is located in Beijing Zoo with Beijing Exhibition Center and Beijing Planetarium to the south, which combines recreation, popular science education with tourism perfectly as one. The aquarium is trumpet shell-shaped with blue and orange colors as background, fully representing the vast ocean and the infinite vitality of the marine creatures, and there are over 50,000 fishes available in the aquarium. Beijing Aquarium is composed of six theme exhibition areas, namely, the Tropical Forest Wonder, the Touch Pool, the Undersea Loop, the Shark Hall, the Dolphin-Whale Bay and the Oceanic Theater.

It seems as if you were in the mysterious Amazon Primitive Forest when walking past the winding path, vivid rockery, tumbling waterfalls, the old bridges, the gentle streams and exotic sculptures in the Tropical Forest Wonder, and there are 22 tanks collecting different kinds of fishes from the oceans and the freshwater rivers scattering among the “forest” and “rocks”, including Blood parrot fish, sea elephants, giant salamanders, and anglerfishes. The simulated coastline in the Touch Pool is 48 meters long, where you can touch various marine creatures in person, including sea hedgehogs, sea anemones, starfish, soldier crabs and horseshoe crabs, and you can also walk on the “white sand beach” and listen to the murmuring of the sea waves here.The main exhibits in the Shark Hall include white-tip sharks, tiger sharks, white sharks and Carcharhinus melanopterus, where the interactive activities are available at regular time in the forms of Man Dancing with Sharks and Feeding Sharks, creating an happy atmosphere for the visitors. The Dolphin-Whale Bay is the home to many marine creatures, where the clever dolphins practice their dancing postures and the clumsy sea lions play with the balls, receiving one ripple of laughter after another from the visitors.

The Oceanic Theater affords a romantic Hawaii-style seafront view and it can accommodate 3,000 visitors, which is the favourite of the children, and the main performances include Rocket & Flying Man Performance (two dolphins lifting men to a great height with their mouths as if launching a rocket), Dolphins Dancing with Man Performance and Dolphin Heading Balls.

The attractions nearby Beijing Aquarium include Beijing Zoo, Great Awakening Temple, the Phoenix Mountain, Capital Indoor Stadium, the Fragrant Hill Park, the Ruins of Yuanming Garden (the Old Summer Palace), Azure Cloud Temple, Chinese Millennium Monument and Baiwangshan Forest Park.

Source by Young M Qingwei