Swimming in a Fish Bowl

One of the main benefits of travel is learning what life is seeing for yourself that there are many different ways to exist. It can be hard, though, to know how much of your judgement to leave at home, and which values to hold on to wherever you are.

In a country that doesn’t have enough room for all of its people where human rights are not protected, how can we expect them to meet our animal care standards? At the same time, an animal in distress is no less distressing for that knowledge.

I knew better than to visit a zoo in China. But when you’re traveling with a 10-year-old, it’s nearly impossible to pass up a zoo. It was as bad as I expected. Even the goldfish pond was overcrowded.