The Great Zoo of China (5 page)

Hu stopped in front of the group.

He threw a quick glance at the deputy director, who checked his watch and then nodded.

CJ saw it. It was as if they were timing this speech to coincide with something.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Hu began, ‘thank you for joining us on this most auspicious day. Today you will see a project that will be like nothing you have ever witnessed before, a $244 billion project that has been forty years in the making. It is a zoo that was built in absolute secrecy because when it is revealed to the world it will cause a sensation.

‘Now, I know what you are thinking,’ Hu Tang paused. ‘You are thinking that there are hundreds of zoos, why does the world need another one? Indeed, what can China do with a zoo that has not already been done before? Ladies and gentlemen . . .
this
is what we can do.’

At that moment, the speeding bullet train burst out into brilliant sunshine and CJ found herself staring at an awesome sight.

The train zoomed out across a vast trestle bridge that spanned a gorge four hundred feet wide and five hundred feet deep. While spectacular, however, the gorge was not the sight that seized her attention.

On the far side of the gorge sat an absolutely colossal landform that resembled a volcano, with high slanted walls that appeared to enclose an immense valley. It appeared to be rectangular in shape, its sides stretching away into the distance for many miles.

A towering mountain peak poked up out of the centre of the rectangular crater, a storybook pinnacle.

And flying around that peak, gliding lazily, their wings outstretched, were seven massive animals, animals that were far larger than any flying creature CJ knew.

Even from this distance—and the train was still at least a few miles from the crater—CJ could clearly make out their shapes: sleek serpentine bodies, long slender necks and, most striking of all, enormous bat-like wings.

Five of the creatures must have been the size of buses while two were bigger still: they each must have been the size of a small airliner.

‘Good lord . . .’ Wolfe said, mouth agape.

‘Holy Toledo . . .’ Hamish gasped.

CJ couldn’t believe it either, but there they were, lifted from myth and flying around in front of her.

She was looking at dragons.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Hu grinned. ‘Welcome to our zoo. Welcome to the Great
Dragon
Zoo of China.’

Fairytales cleanse and sanitise what were once true stories.

In fairytales, knights are chivalrous, clean-shaven and wear shining armour—when in truth they were swarthy, filthy rapists and thugs. Castles are bright and gay when in truth they were grim fortresses.

If dragons were real, then in all likelihood they were not graceful, high-chested, noble creatures; rather they would have been dirty, ugly, reptilian and mean.

—CRAIG FERGUSON, THE POWER OF MYTH

(MOMENTUM, SYDNEY, 2013)

A
s the train rushed toward the crater, Deputy Director Zhang quickly put on a new blazer.

It was bright red in colour, just like his old one, but it bore a different logo on the breast pocket: a gold dragon inside a gold circle, with the Chinese flag filling the background. Ringing the circumference were the words:
THE MIGHTIEST AND MOST MAGNIFICENT PLACE ON EARTH
.

Red information folders emblazoned with the same logo were handed out.

CJ felt both intrigued and misled. A carefully prepared switch had just been executed by her hosts right in front of her eyes.

She also felt a twinge of anger when she saw the smug CCTV reporter, Xin Xili, and her crew filming CJ’s surprised reaction. Xin’s snide remark about CJ not being one of the world’s leading experts on large reptiles for much longer echoed in her mind.

Hu Tang affixed a Great Dragon Zoo of China lapel pin to his jacket and said, ‘I must apologise for all the fake branding at our train station and on our people’s uniforms, but it has been necessary to keep our zoo a secret for so long. As you will see, it is worth it.’

About five minutes later, the bullet train pulled into a station in front of the main entrance to the Great Dragon Zoo of China.

The entrance building was magnificent.

Jutting out from the front face of the immense crater, it was a glorious white building that looked like a cross between a castle and a spaceship. It must have been forty storeys tall. Two high-spired towers shot skyward from its roof, framing the central edifice.

The structure’s marble walls were glittering white and perfectly smooth. They shone in the sunlight. And there wasn’t a sharp corner to be seen on the thing: it was all sweeping curves of marble, glass and steel. It was a post-modern masterpiece.

A long silver drawbridge spanning a moat led to an eighty-foot-high silver door that gave access to the incredible structure. Right now, the drawbridge lay open.

The entire building rose all the way up the southern face of the mighty crater, reaching right up to its rim.

A vast piazza lay before the glistening white building. Standing proudly in the middle of it was a gigantic crystal statue of a dragon rearing up on its hind legs, wings outstretched, jaws bared. It must have been seventy feet tall.

‘Our main entrance building was designed by Goethe + Loche, the prestigious German architectural firm,’ Zhang said as he guided the group out of the train station and across the piazza to the drawbridge. ‘And our crystal dragon was designed by the French sculptor Christial. It is rather striking, is it not?’

‘Magnificent . . .’ Wolfe said.

‘Superb . . .’ Perry said.

CJ said nothing as she walked underneath the statue.

Everything about the scene—the marble square, the crystal dragon statue, the moat and drawbridge, the post-modern castle—it all just sparkled.

It was, she had to admit, impressive. More than that, it was
distinctive
, as distinctive as Disneyland.

But as she considered this, CJ also realised that Seymour Wolfe had been correct: the Chinese hadn’t designed any of what she’d seen so far; it had been the work of European architects and artists.

Countless bollards and rope fences had been erected around the square, creating aisles that switched back and forth in anticipation of the enormous crowds the Chinese expected to come here.

There were no queues today, but CJ could imagine them. If the Chinese had really created a zoo with dragons in it, the crowds would be monstrous.

With those thoughts in her mind, she followed her hosts across the drawbridge and through the superhigh silver doorway into the Great Dragon Zoo of China.

E
ntering the main building, CJ stepped into the loftiest atrium she had ever seen in her life. The ceiling of the vast space hovered an astounding thirty-five storeys above her, as if it had been designed to house a space shuttle.

CJ saw a tangle of white-painted girders up there, suspended from which was a collection of enormous—and very lifelike—dragon sculptures that appeared to be made of fibreglass.

Some had their wings outstretched while others dived toward the ground, hawk-like, talons pointed forward. Others still stood on massive pedestals in coiled, crouched stances, as if ready to pounce. All had their fearsome jaws open, fangs bared.

The dragons, CJ noted, came in several sizes. Their colours also varied: some were brilliant and vibrant, with splashes of red-on-black or yellow-on-black, while others were more earthy: rocky greys and olive greens.

Eight glass elevators ran up the side wall of the giant atrium and CJ and her party rode up in one of them, rising past the suspended dragons, all the while filmed by the CCTV crew.

‘This,’ Wolfe said, gazing at one of the more aggressive dragon statues outside the elevator’s glass walls, ‘is simply amazing. This is what it would be like to fly with dragons.’

Hu Tang smiled. ‘My dear Mr Wolfe. You have not seen anything yet.’

The elevator opened onto an entertaining suite. Food and drinks had been laid out.

A fifty-metre-wide bank of floor-to-ceiling windows and glass doors faced north and CJ found herself drawn to them. The glass was tinted to keep out the glare, so she could only just make out the vista beyond the windows.