You're listening to Roundtable.
I'm Steve Hatherly today with Fei-Fei and Yuxin.
Coming up, a bit of controversy for today's soapbox.
A surprising diet plan is making headlines at an animal park in the northeastern part of the country, where some 200 animals are being put on a rotating fast these days after tourists fed them heavily during the spring festival boom.
Officials call it Responsible Animal Management.
But the story opens a larger conversation about wildlife tourism, human behavior and where conservation ends and spectacle begins.
After that, there's a thin line between connection and cringe.
We've all felt that moment.
It's when you reveal something and you immediately think, OMG, why did I just share that?
Why did I say that?
But maybe that discomfort is exactly where the good stuff lives we're talking over sharing today.
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It's time for the soapbox.
Welcome to another edition of The Soapbox.
It's where we choose one story that's been causing a bit of a stir as of late, either online or at least in our own brains.
And then we take a moment, we break it down for you, and we tell you how we really feel about it.
Today, Fei Fei has the reins.
And it is, I said a couple of times already, it's a bit controversial.
And I think that's a fair statement, right?
Exactly.
So the story happened in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, at a park. called Siberian Tiger Park.
And the story goes like this.
So more than 300 Siberian tigers have been put on a rotating light fasting program because over the spring festival holiday they saw a peak in visitors, which leads to overfed of these animals.
Because?
Because in the park, there are areas where visitors can throw beef or live chicken to feed them.
So if I'm visiting this Siberian tiger park, there's a lot of tigers there, 300 of them.
300 and 200 live in free-range areas.
So I go in there, I'm a customer, I go to the shop in the park and I can buy things for the tigers to eat um fresh chicken or something like that, or beef or whatever the raw meat that you buy from the park as a customer and then you feed it to the tigers yourself.
Yeah, it's um very, a very popular um tourism activity in this park in harbin in general is that you go on sort of a bus and you have a little bucket if you decide to buy one of these meat strips or chicken And you go on the bus with a bucket and they have a small hole on the bus's window because the bus has been protected.
You're going into a carnival area, so you can't step out.
It's been modified.
Yeah, you can't open the window, of course.
They will have a small hole on the window where you can sort of have a clip, where you can take out the meat and feed the tiger through that little hole on the bus, the window.
You don't put your fingers out, of course not yeah, and then you will be the food.
But the thing is that these kind of things are quite popular because they can always offer that kind of immersive experience of interacting with these wildlife.
And you are sitting in that fenced butts and the bus is going around that, that area and you can feed them with that bucket of raw meat.
But the thing is that when there is a season when a lot of tourists are going in that area and Which means that more people will like to feed them,
Of course, that's the reason they're going to the tiger park for.
That's one of the reasons.
We talked about the rise of the experiential economy, the experience economy, where people enjoy this kind of activity, where they're taking part in something interactive.
Yeah, it's important to note that the fact that it was spring festival is an important part of this story, because the number of visitors visiting the park would be much, much higher than at different times of the year.
Yeah, on average, they saw about more than 10 000 visitors per day visiting this park, and we can imagine how they don't have an official account when it comes to how many people decide to participate in these feeding activities, but we can assume there will be a lot.
And they will also report during the Spring Festival about these animals.
These tigers, these big cats will no longer respond to visitors who try to feed them because they're just overfed.
They're full.
They're full.
They won't eat a thing from the visitors and that creates a problem.
So that's why, after the holiday, the park decided to implement this rotation fasting program, meaning that in one particular zone, visitors are not allowed to feed them anymore.
But in other areas, They're still open for feeding.
That runs from February the 1st to March the 21st.
So the park responded.
OK, well, first, let's make the controversy clear.
People are unhappy with which aspect?
The feeding aspect during the holiday or the post-holiday fasting aspect, would you say, or is it both?
I think it's both, actually.
There will be disappointed visitors saying well, you know, I come to Harbin, I come to this park for this activity, and now I'm not allowed to do that.
And there will be also other people saying that, how can you overfed the tigers?
They're endangered animals.
You should never do that in the first place.
Okay, that's one opinion.
That's another opinion.
What's the park's response to all of this?
They said that this is them being responsible because, just like us, just like human beings, during the spring festival we get plump.
We put on a few kilograms.
Post-spring festival, we go back to the gym and we start our own diets.
The park is saying it's the same thing that's happening here with the tigers.
They ate too much during the spring festival.
Now we're giving them a diet so that they can have a healthier lifestyle.
Yeah, the park officials explained that this plant is part of their scientific management.
And also they say that not only the rotation helps prevent digestive stress and also can maintain tigers' natural hunger rhythms.
And actually, according to an expert, he's called Jiang Guangshun.
He is from the National Forestry and Grassland Administration's CAT Research Center said fasting has long been a standard practice at tiger parks.
Because periodic fasting is a scientifically grounded feeding strategies for these large carnivores.
The goal is to help captive tigers retain their patterns and metabolic characteristics seen in the wild.
So, from the perspective of preserving their natural instincts, fasting follows the activity and feeding rhythms of wild tigers.
So it's not only just for spring festival or any tourism busy holidays.
In some parks there has been a fasting program in place on a daily.
Not on a daily basis, I would say on a routinely basis.
Because that's how a Siberian tiger would live anyway.
Sometimes food would be abundant and sometimes food would not be abundant.
Kind of like nature providing the tiger with a natural fasting cycle.
Yes, exactly.
So the audience's, the public's response to this is, I assume, has been a little bit mixed.
Some people would have to feel negatively about it because they thought their own personal experience would be affected by the trip to the park by the park manager's decisions.
But other people would have to be in support of this, what the management is doing.
Yeah, because the reactions are by and large understanding.
They're saying that because this is also a learning curve for a lot of visitors as well.
They are only realizing there needs to be some kind of control when it comes to animal conservation and animal management.
And so some tourists told reporters at China Daily that they support the measure because they learned that it's aimed at protecting the animals' long-term health and realizing that reasonable control is part of good care.
Which leads you to your soapbox.
And there's so many different angles that you could go with this, Fei-Fei.
Yeah, you could talk about it from the park's point of view, from the tiger's point of view, from the visitor's point of view.
Those who support those who don't support.
So I will pass the mic over to you.
So here comes my soapbox.
Criticizing feeding at this Siberian tiger park is easy. if we ignore their operational reality.
Conservation at this scale, we are talking about more than 300 tigers, is expensive.
There needs to be feeding care, habitat maintenance enrichment, staff training, and these are ongoing, high-cost responsibilities.
And at this park, open to the public since 1996, It is the place that has been a window for many people to learn about this endangered tiger in China.
So visitor feeding, when structured and controlled, isn't automatically unscientific.
In many managed wildlife settings, regulated feeding is used as a management tool.
It allows staff to observe appetite and behavior while giving visitors a controlled form of engagement.
So the real problem isn't the activity itself, it's about regulation.
And also there is a public dimension when it comes to these feeding activities.
People don't support conservation if they feel disconnected from it.
Structured participation like these feeding activities can turn spectators into stakeholders.
Feeding offers instant feedback.
You give food, the animal responds and then people feel a connection.
It can feel like you are also caring for nature.
You are also taking part in conservation.
And in today's short video culture it also means a powerful communication channel if you make a short video about it.
So the real issue isn't about whether feeding should exist or not.
It's about whether institutions manage it scientifically, price it responsibly and explain its purpose clearly.
And sustainable conservation depends on these two things working together biological integrity and financial viability.
So here is my soapbox.
You can see the position that I decided to take.
Yeah, you're on the side of.
If I understood correctly, you're saying that hey, this is not strictly a zoo.
This is a place for conservation.
These animals are endangered.
The people who work in this place are there because they're trying to protect these tigers.
The tigers have to eat, obviously.
But not only that, the parks, the conservation parks, need to pay the bills.
And by selling raw beef or raw chicken or what have you for the visitors to feed the tigers.
This helps to pay the bills for the parks and it allows them to continue their great work that they're doing by protecting these tigers.
That's my position.
Yushin, what do you think?
I mean, of course, from the zoo's perspective.
It does seem like killing two birds with one stone, right.
Visitors get the experience of immersive feeding huge cats, shifting the part of the feeding cost onto them on the tourists.
And also it is really a good thing for the tigers, I was thinking, and also that's exactly the thing that worries me, because first they overeat and then their intake is managed through periods of light fasting to compensate.
We know that that is a very I mean yeah people are saying that yeah, like light fasting is becoming a very healthy lifestyle in recent years on social media.
That's for human, of course.
But we also know that overeat is a very bad habit before light fasting, right?
So you think maybe... Just shouldn't have them overeat.
Well...
I mean, yeah, right.
And I don't mean to interrupt you Yuxin, but you're saying that the park needs to be more responsible with the fasting.
There would be no need for the fasting if the park didn't allow the tigers to overeat in the first place.
Yes.
First of all, we see that the responsibility of this park.
It is a national tourist attraction and also a breeding base for the Siberian tiger genetic resource and a reserve unit supporting that northeast China tiger and leopard national park right.
So it has a scientific purpose, which means that they have the responsibility to give the scientific management on the food that they are feeding them.
So if a tiger's diet had to fluctuate based on how much food or how much tourists are throwing in.
That level of uncertainty seems just way too high to the, I think, the whole conservation purpose.
Yusheng is such a caring parent for the tigers.
They're worrying about the eating, the dieting is not balanced out enough.
Are you not, though?
But like you said, Steve...
Maybe it's part of the nature anyways.
You know, for wild tigers, they get fed up sometimes.
Sometimes they can be starved for weeks because they can't find any food in the nature.
That's part of it.
And I think, when it comes to these captive tigers, the large chance would be they will stay in this park forever, for their whole life.
It's part of the downside of keeping...
The animals, for example, a tiger that was born there.
Yeah, yeah.
If you release them back into the wild, from what I've learned from documentaries, they would have a very, very low chance of survival.
Yeah, and also when it comes to these endangered tigers, most of the chance they are bred in this park or other parks, similar conservation breeding centers, because in the past in the wild, there are just less than thousands of them in the wild.
And so how to keep that instinct, to keep them still tigers, not cats.
Having this kind of fasting program would be one of the methods.
Otherwise, they will be just big cats in the park.
I'm always so torn about an issue when it comes to the zoo.
Because, from for the people who work there, from my experience of speaking to people who worked in animal parks, they love animals so much.
They are super passionate about what they're doing.
So I'm not questioning the motives of the people who work in those places.
It's an excellent opportunity for education about animals, but that part I don't like.
That's the part I don't like.
I don't need to be educated about a Siberian tiger.
I could live my whole life never meeting a Siberian tiger and that would be okay, and I'm sure it would be okay with the tiger as well.
So there's the captivity.
You said captive.
I hate that part.
I hate the part of holding an animal in a place that it wouldn't want to be otherwise.
But then, conservation.
There would be no more of these Siberian tigers if we didn't have these types of parks.
So I don't know how I feel.
There's only one thing I know.
If you're a spoiled tourist and you go to this park and you feel upset because you didn't get to give beef to a tiger on this particular day, shut up.
It's not there for you and your entertainment.
That's the other part that I hate about zoos.
If they're there for conservation and the animals are kept properly or with their best I guess intentions from the park management then I guess I support it.
But for the entertainment value, that's where I start to feel really uncomfortable.
So, yeah, that's why it's such a hot ticket issue on the Internet these days.
You're listening to Roundtable.
I'm Steve with Yuxin and Fei Fei.
And I wonder, do you overshare or undershare?
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Then tune in to Roundtable, where East meets West and understanding is the goal.
This is Roundtable.
I'm Steve with Yishun and Feifei.
Have you ever left a conversation, replaying it in your head, wondering why you shared something so personal?
Or maybe you held back and later you wished you hadn't.
We're told to be authentic, to be vulnerable and to be open, but we're also warned about oversharing.
TMI, too much information, too personal, too soon.
So which is the best path to take?
Is openness the key to connection or are we crossing invisible boundaries without realizing it?
There was some research conducted recently from the Harvard Business School by a behavioral scientist by the name of Leslie K John on this specific topic, because she studies self-disclosure.
This is an interesting one, I think.
What did they find in the research?
So, first of all, how people decide what personal information to share in everyday interactions is what she studies
Her work explores how openness affects trust and also relationships.
And the focus wasn't just social media.
It was everyday conversation.
The research looks at how sharing personal thoughts or experiences shapes friendships and also workplace relationships.
And the key question is, do we misjudge how others react to personal sharing?
Because many people fear making others uncomfortable by opening up, and the research examines whether that fear matches the reality.
Yeah, right.
We always think if we share too much information, people are going to judge us for it.
Okay, so that was the focus of the research.
What did they discover?
They discover actually most of people underestimate the benefits of opening up.
Interesting.
So sharing something personal signals trust and encourages others to trust you in return.
And the scientist John explains that trust becomes the quote unquote social currency of relationships.
But for most people we just focus heavily on the risks of revealing, really not the benefits, because people worry about embarrass themselves or having that awkwardness or really considered that the connections that might result after you share some of your personal information.
I mean, I think I get it.
Sharing too much is a concern.
We're worried what other people will think about us.
Although this research, by the way, you can find this if you're interested.
It's in the Harvard Gazette.
It came out not long ago.
Yeah, people worry if they overshare, it's going to affect the relationship negatively.
But the research shows that's not true.
We actually... we underestimate the power of sharing.
Yes.
And also withholding as well.
The power of withholding.
Because there's two sides to that.
Yeah.
Research shows that people often make a better impression by being open than hiding information.
So withholding can actually damage your connections more than sharing.
Because you don't build that trust.
Yes.
People don't trust you if you never share anything.
I can totally relate to that.
If I'm, for example, thinking this co-worker that we are close enough.
Which co-worker?
Don't make me name names.
Don't under-share.
We're building trust here.
I'm withholding this key information.
But I feel like we were close enough to share some of our personal lives.
And then I discovered that he or she has... sort of hold some of her updates, life updates from me.
You said her.
Oh, sorry.
So how did that make you feel then in that moment?
Yeah, I was like, I thought we were friends.
That's how it goes, right?
But there's a fine line between you should being open and sharing and TMI too much information because that also makes people feel uncomfortable.
Yeah, of course, because healthy sharing builds trust right, it makes you, makes people feel that you are genuine and but TMI ignores thing timing and also context.
One example is that telling your co-worker that you've been like having that overwhelmed adjusting to a new role can build understanding, also support, But describing intimate relationship problems in the same setting may feel out of place and uncomfortable.
And another thing I would like to say is that I think the expectation of you getting the same feedback is also very important.
Of course, we know the boundary.
Or it's hard to find the boundary, first of all.
But when you are trying to be genuine, you are sharing something to your coworkers, all your friends, and you are not getting the same response that makes you feel that am I sharing too much?
So there has to be some reciprocity then.
It needs to be reciprocal.
It needs to be both.
And both people need to be sharing everything.
A similar level of personal information.
Like, I can't complain about my in-laws to Yushun.
Like Yushun would be like okay, that's some kind of information I don't really need about your in-laws.
Sounds like you've tried before.
But I can complain.
But some of our co-workers who are married, we can complain about our in-laws together.
So it needs to be relatable.
Yes, yes.
Do you agree with that, Yushun?
Not specifically about her in-laws, but just that it needs to be relatable?
Also, not necessarily, to be honest.
If you are close enough and you have the patience and, I think, um the ability to like respond to it, no matter i have an in-law or not, i think i will just respond to you and think about it as a friend and telling you what is actually happening.
And it's not about, i think when, whatever you're saying, it's not about how can you deal with an in-law, it's about how can you deal with a relationship.
So, no matter what, when you are having that kind of conversation, I think the person who are actually caring about you or not is the important part.
So I think, when it comes to sharing, it needs also to be a gradual process, not dump everything all at once.
Like you need to get to know the person first of all.
Trust is a huge issue because you know that expression, you can't put the genie back in the bottle.
Once you share, it's out there.
It's known, right?
And I think this is particularly tricky at work.
Because how much do you value your relationships with your coworkers?
How close do you actually need to be?
Well, that answer is completely up to you.
Are you building a friendship with that person or are you not?
But I would say, you know, it's safer to be on the side of caution.
And I think that's to what the point you were talking about before, about slowly building Same level, not too much, too soon, too fast.
It's like if you go on a date with a dude and it's the first date and he's like, I think I love you.
It's like, all right, well, just relax a little bit.
Yeah.
Right.
I think it's the same thing here.
I remember working.
I had a coworker.
I was teaching at an elementary school in Korea.
And my coworker, I was a very young man.
She was married, though, and she was living with her in-laws.
And she used to complain sometimes about her mother-in-law.
And I loved it.
I was all for it.
Because we would have these after school classes that she and I would teach, and then we'd just have break time and she'd chat.
And she told me a story one day.
I'll never forget it.
This was like 20 years ago.
I've never forgotten this story.
She's like, Steve, oh my gosh, my mother-in-law.
I said, why?
What is it today?
She said, well, she makes me iron the towels.
And I was like, do you mean like the shower towels or the dish towels like for the kitchen?
She said, all the towels.
I have to iron them.
And I said OK, that's a bit of an annoying thing, but it's not like there's 50 people living in your house.
You know, a few towels once every couple of weeks.
Not that bad, is it?
She said, no, we're only allowed to use the towel one time before it needs to be washed again.
So I iron towels every single day from Monday to Sunday.
And I was like, oh, that's too bad for you.
But thanks for sharing.
That's a good story.
That was a great story.
And I'm going to tell that on the radio in China about 20 years from now.
That'll do it for today's roundtable.
Thanks for sharing your time.
Sharing, yes.
Thank you for sharing your time with us today.
I'm Steve for YouShin and Feifei.
Have a great one.
See you next time.
