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| Welcome to the World’s Most Controversial Pet Shop Posted: 03 Jul 2012 01:31 AM PDT
NOAH: The Inner City Zoo is a Japanese pet shop condemned by animal activists for caging and selling penguins, meerkats, alligators, monkeys and other exotic animals. Located in a cramped room, on the second floor of an office building in Yokohama, NOAH: The Inner City Zoo is hardly the kind of place you’d think of keeping exotic animals. But ever since 1999, NOAH (Nature Orientated Animal House) has been the go-to source for all kinds of unusual pets, from alligators to otters and cranes. Many of them are endangered in their natural habitats, but that doesn’t seem to raise any red flags with Japanese animal protection authorities, and neither does the fact they are all being kept in tiny cages, with barely enough space to move around. The controversial pet shop’s clientele also seems to ignore the improper conditions, and spends thousands of dollars on unique pets. Photo: terutopic Animal rights organizations around the world have condemned NOAH for selling exotic animals people have little to no knowledge how to take care of, and are urging people not to visit or buy anything from it. “Exotic animals should live in the wild as nature intended, not in captivity as a source of entertainment and prestige, and to line the pockets of greedy pet shop owners. Breeding and selling wild animals as exotic pets is cruel and irresponsible”, said Alan Knight, chief executive of International Animal Rescue. He is sure many of the exotic animals acquired as pets eventually end up abandoned, after their owners get bored with them, or after they grow too big and strong to manage. It also encourages the capturing and selling of these creatures, endangering their global population. Photo: Foursquare But Kenji Takahashi, the 59-year-old owner of NOAH: The Inner City Zoo, says he’s just “trying to increase the love that humans have for exotic animals.” “My premises may not be perfect and the space we have for each animal is not as big as we would sometimes like, but the same could be said for any zoo across the world,” Takahashi says. He believes his pet shop helps people appreciate nature more, because they realize that’s where their pets come from. That’s one “great” excuse to charge people $6 just to look through your shop, and thousands of bucks for exotic pets. Photo: n_n1234567 About the animals at NOAH, one onlooker said "Most animals were quiet, as if they'd come to terms with their enforced captivity. Many are in tiny cages, and the owls are tightly fixed down so they can't fly. The animals looked sad”. Judging by the sizes of the cages they are kept in, it’s no surprise all these poor creatures are sad, but as long as they it doesn’t bother shoppers, this pet store remains in business.
Just last week, I wrote an article about the controversial Lujan Zoo, where people are allowed to pet and interact with dangerous animals, but NOAH: The Inner City Zoo makes that place look like animal heaven. Welcome to the World’s Most Controversial Pet Shop was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
| The Fragile Porcelain House of Tianjin Posted: 03 Jul 2012 12:41 AM PDT
Zhang Lianzhi, a 50-year-old porcelain collector from Tianjin, China, has spent four years decorating an old house with hundreds of millions of ancient porcelain fragments and tons of natural crystals. It’s now known as the Porcelain House or Yuebao House. The Porcelain House of Tianjin opened its gates to the public on September 2nd, 2007, onChifeng Street in Heping District. The old French-style building has a history of over 100 years. It was originally the home of a central finance minister in the late Qing dynasty, and was later converted into a bank, after the founding of New China, in 1949. But after the bank changed its location, the beautiful building was left deserted for several years, until porcelain collector Zhang Lianzhi bought it for 1 million yuan ($160,000). He then spent the following four years turning it into a unique edifice, decorated with porcelain dating from the Tang (AD 618-907) to the Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. Now the Porcelain House is the most eye-catching building in Tianjin, and one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions. Photo: What’s on Tianjin Covering an area of 3,000 square meters, the Porcelain House is decorated with 400 million pieces of ancient porcelain, 16 thousand pieces of ancient chinaware, 300 white-marble carvings, and 20 tons of natural crystals. The whole transformation is rumored to have cost Zhang Lianzhi approximately 2 billion yuan ($315 million). About 80 percent of the porcelain used to cover the house comes from broken or damaged antiques, but the eccentric collector mixed up the different fragments and pasted them on the walls in such a way to conceal the damaged parts. In fact, most of them look intact. The courtyard wall is covered with around 3,000 porcelain vases, and is called name “Ping’an Qiang” (Wall of Wellness). Photo: Easy Tour China Zhang, a successful businessman with an interest in art and culture, made sure elements of Chinese culture could be seen at every turn of his Porcelain House. Perhaps the most impressive are the four ”China dragons” entwining the exterior wall of the building. Each dragon is more than 200 meters long and is pieced together from thousands of porcelain pieces. They symbolize the power of ancient China and are one of the most dominant features in Chinese architecture. But while the porcelain-covered exterior of the edifice shines in the sunlight, capturing the attention of passers-by, on the inside porcelain is only used to decorate the part of the ceiling, the rail and the doors. Photo: Easy Tour China Zhang Lianzhi was born into a wealthy businessman’s family in Tianjin and has a profitable Cantonese-style restaurant chain. Over the past 20 years he has constantly expanded his collection of which antique porcelain makes up the majority. One of the latest additions is a functional Land Rover covered with approximately 10,000 pieces of antique ceramics. It’s estimated worth is 1 million yuan ($160,000). Photo: Easy Tour China Photo: Easy Tour China Photo: China Daily Photo: Xinhua News
The Fragile Porcelain House of Tianjin was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
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