China Exclusive: Monkey Year tourists too matey with primates

On Qishan Mountain in Fujian Province, a sign warning "Feeding and playing with the monkeys is forbidden" is not really working.

Just meters away, as staff watch on, a family cheerfully encourage their toddler to hand over an orange to a roaming pack of the macaques.

"It's more fun than watching them from afar in a zoo, and it's the Year of the Monkey so we hope feeding them will bring us good luck," one tourist said.

The primates of Chinese nature reserves may be happy to be getting more tasty treats from visitors a month into their zodiac year, but many park wardens and animal rights activists are worried about peaking contact between tourists and monkeys.

Primates have been known to attack humans, whose food can in turn be bad for monkeys' health. Noisy, littering tourists can also damage monkey habitats.

"Wild monkeys that are used to getting food from tourists may attack humans if they don't have food," said Grace Ge Gabriel, Asia regional director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Of course, it is always the animals that get punished if such confrontations arise, she complained.

Not that residents of Shuangfeng Village near Qishan Mountain seem to mind. Since the turn of the new lunar year in February, they have been busy selling peanuts as monkey snacks and fancier fare to peckish hikers wrapping up a day's sightseeing.

The monkeys are bringing in business, so it's not surprising if park staff and local officials are keen to turn a blind eye to visitors getting over-friendly with the hairy stars of the year.

Qishan Mountain boasts stunning waterfalls and nerve-jangling suspension bridges, but monkeys are definitely the main attraction and major source of income, according to locals.

"At weekends, monkey watchers turn our village into a parking lot, and I can't even find a place for my own car," said restaurant owner Wu Kaiyu.

MONKEY BUSINESSES GO BANANAS

The macaques are not native to the mountain. After being rescued from a band of smugglers, a group of macaques was freed onto Qishan's slopes a decade ago. They were soon bringing in tourists, helping to revitalize an economy that was in the doldrums after the closure of a state-managed logging business that employed most of the villagers.

The monkeys spend most of the year in tourists spots, where they hoover up snacks fed to them by visitors.

Wu Yuxi, a breeder hired by the local tourist administration, has noted a significant rise in visitors since February. His job includes preparing a monkey breakfast of corn every morning and occasionally driving away his charges when they threaten to attack tourists.

Similar enthusiasm is sweeping Mount Emei, Sichuan Province, whose administrators are offering free entrance to anyone born in the Year of the Monkey and are planning to add new monkey viewing platforms to cater to demand.

But they have also tried to limit monkeys' time with the tourists, after they noticed the animals were getting fat and lazy on a diet of junk food. They have also had a spate of reports of tourists being attacked by monkeys.

"There are docile monkeys and there are also ferocious ones. We have to remind tourists to be careful and encourage them to buy our monkey fodder, not use their own food," said Zhou Chuanbin, a tourism manager for Mount Emei.

A forestry official at Qishan Mountain said injuries arising from visitors getting too close to the monkeys were becoming so common that his department was reluctant to advertise the monkeys for fear of shouldering more compensation.

In an email response to Xinhua, WWF said public viewing of wild animals should not be allowed to disrupt their lives. "We hope tourists can avoid feeding, teasing wild animals or littering their habitats," it said. Enditem

(Chen Wang and Yu Li contributed to the sto