| Jaime |
09-21-2006 11:40 PM |
:D Chinese tourist bites panda back after four pitchers
A drunken Chinese tourist bit a panda at the Beijing Zoo after the animal attacked him when he jumped into the enclosure and tried to hug it, state media said yesterday.
Zhang Xinyan had drunk four pitchers of beer at a restaurant before “stumbling to the zoo” nearby and stopping off at the pen holding a sleeping 6-year-old male panda, Gu Gu, on Tuesday, the Beijing Morning Post said.
“He felt a sudden urge to touch the panda with his hand” and jumped over a waist-high railing down into the enclosure, the newspaper said.
“When he got closer and was undiscovered, he reached out to hug it.” Startled, Gu Gu bit Zhang in the right leg, it said.
Zhang, a 35-year-old migrant labourer from central Henan province, got angry and kicked the panda, who then bit his other leg. A tussle ensued, the paper said.
“I bit the fellow in the back,” Zhang was quoted as saying in the newspaper. “Its skin was quite thick.”
The Beijing Youth Daily quoted Zhang, a father of two who was visiting Beijing for the first time, as saying that he had seen pandas on television and “they seemed to get along well with people.”
“No one ever said they would bite people,” Zhang said.
“I just wanted to touch it. I was so dizzy from the beer. I don’t remember much.”
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