During the peak summer travel season, a distinctive large-scale zoo opened in Qingyuan, Guangdong Province. Designed to replicate an African wildlife habitat, the park follows a "zoning, no-caging" concept, replacing traditional cages and dense barriers with open habitats that allow more than 300 species and 10,000 wild animals to roam freely across the mountain landscape.

What makes this lush, high-vegetation sanctuary even more remarkable is that it was transformed from a former mining pit. Since taking over the site, the zoo has invested heavily in systematic ecological restoration, reinforcing pit slopes, planting more than 40,000 native trees and shrubs, creating wetland ecosystems, and restoring the natural water cycle. After more than a decade of scientific rehabilitation, the once-degraded landscape has been revitalized into a stable subtropical secondary forest ecosystem.

Today, the zoo is home to several rare and significant animal populations, including the world's largest giraffe herd outside Africa, China's only black rhino population, and the country's largest ex-situ conservation herd of African elephants. One visitor remarked, "The animals here are completely at ease—there's none of the confinement you feel in traditional zoos. It's a truly raw and breathtaking experience."