After returning home, Pei Qian took out his laptop, first doing some basic research about zoos online to understand some fundamental knowledge, and then began to consider how Tenda’s zoo should be implemented.
First of all, it definitely wouldn’t be a large-scale zoo, at least not at present.
Many large zoos abroad have specific requirements for location and climate. For example, some tropical countries create tropical animal zoos primarily because the climate is suitable, and secondly because they have enough space.
But Pei Qian’s idea was to open this zoo near Jingqi Inn, which was in the old industrial area of Jingzhou. Strictly speaking, this place wasn’t at all a good location for a zoo. And Jingzhou’s climate itself wasn’t suitable for raising tropical or polar animals.
Of course, he could create indoor facilities and regulate the temperature through air conditioning.
But this would certainly increase both construction time and expenses.
Pei Qian didn’t mind higher expenses, but the construction timeline was something to consider, since the first phase of the zoo project was for emergency spending and had to be completed before the next settlement.
Moreover, the larger the zoo and the more rare animals it had, the more visitors it would naturally attract, greatly increasing the probability of making a profit.
In summary, the goal for the first phase of this zoo was: make it smaller while ensuring the construction timeline, preferably without too many rare animals. On this foundation, burn as much money as possible.
If the first step went smoothly, then later they could try some more challenging things, such as building large-scale air-conditioned rooms to house tropical or polar animals.
Secondly, the selection of animals needed careful consideration.
To reduce visitors, they must minimize rare animals.
Many small zoos don’t have much worth seeing, but just because they have two giant pandas, visitors would still come in droves.
And many especially rare animals transported from other countries over long distances would become the zoo’s centerpieces, becoming a must-see reason for most people.
In a zoo, the most valuable assets are definitely the animals.
To become popular, investment must be made in the animals.
Therefore, since he didn’t want popularity but wanted to lose money, there shouldn’t be too many rare animals, at least not at this stage. Even if rare animals were to be included later, it would only be after thorough assessment and confirming that the cost of raising them far exceeded the income they generated.
So the question arose: if not rare animals, then what?
They couldn’t just fill the entire zoo with horses, cattle, sheep, and the like, could they? Would that even be called a zoo, or would it be a farm?
Pei Qian couldn’t do something that others would immediately see as problematic.
So, a balance had to be struck: while having some wild animals for appearance’s sake, they should also raise as many other common, unremarkable animals as possible.
This zoo might not even be called a “zoo,” but rather something like an “Animal Living Hall.”
“What kind of animals would be cost-effective to raise?”
“Ideally, something between domesticated and precious wild animals, such as servals, arctic foxes, angora ferrets, and so on, could all be considered.”
Domestic and foreign regulations on keeping wild animals also differ. Some people abroad keep wild animals like cheetahs and mountain lions as pets, but this isn’t allowed in China. For example, servals are protected animals in China and cannot be kept casually.
Some animals, like arctic foxes and angora ferrets, can be kept as pets.
But regardless, animals that can be kept as pets are certainly more common and relatively less rare.
Truly rare animals are all protected, so how could ordinary people possibly keep them?
Following this logic, it would be appropriate to raise these animals in the zoo. On one hand, they’re not particularly rare, so they won’t attract visitors from far away to see them; on the other hand, they are genuine wild animals, so having them in a zoo wouldn’t seem strange, and people wouldn’t think the zoo was actually a cat café or a farm.
In short, as a zoo, money could be spent anywhere, except on buying rare wild animals.
So where should the money be spent?
Simple: on space, food, and personnel!
First, space. Pei Qian had visited many small zoos. Although these zoos themselves occupied considerable area, there were too many animals, so the activity space for each individual animal wasn’t large.
Of course, the activity space for all animals has standards that must comply with the “Zoo Design Specifications.”
There are strict requirements for the proportion of land used for animal exhibition buildings, science education buildings, animal protection facilities, etc., as well as strict requirements for visitor capacity, visitable building area, recreational green space, and so on.
All zoos certainly comply with the corresponding regulations.
But these regulations only specify the lower limit, not the upper limit!
Space is always insufficient, after all, wild animals were originally wild, running around in forests, so when confined, no space is ever enough.
So Pei Qian decided that in this new zoo, the area occupied by each animal would be at least 50% more than in other zoos!
Take baboons, for example. The minimum cage area is 80 square meters, the fence height is 4 meters, and the basic population is 2 adult individuals. For each additional adult, the inner house area must increase by 25% to 50%.
In simpler terms, two baboons require 80 square meters of space, and for each additional one, at least another 20 square meters must be added.
But this area is only the lower limit of the national regulations for cage design parameters, which is definitely a bit cramped.
Pei Qian decided to first increase this standard by 50%, so 80 square meters would become 120 square meters, and for each additional adult individual, the inner house area would also be increased by the maximum of 50%!
Of course, it couldn’t be too excessive. If the area suddenly increased three or four times, with only two baboons in a 300+ square meter cage, that would be a bit too strange. In that case, when visitors came, they wouldn’t be watching animals but searching for them, having no idea where the two baboons had gone.
Pei Qian didn’t mind this situation, but if it was too extreme, his motives would be too obvious, and the system might not agree. And if it was too ridiculous, it might generate discussion online, accumulating unnecessary attention.
The cages should be a bit larger, but not so large as to be conspicuous.
The environment within the cages must also be of the highest standard, that was certain.
Next was food, which would also follow the highest standards and specifications, nothing more to say about that.
With Tan Xinzhang overseeing, there would absolutely be no skimping on animal rations. Moreover, feeding the animals better would just result in them gaining some weight, which visitors wouldn’t notice much. This expenditure could be said to be very discreet and worthwhile.
Finally, personnel.
A zoo requires a large number of staff, such as keepers, breeders, veterinarians, cleaners, and so on.
These are all necessary supporting facilities for a zoo. The number of animals determines the number of keepers and veterinarians needed, which is fairly fixed. Even if Pei Qian wanted to hire more, he couldn’t hire too many more. And even if he wanted to offer high salaries, there was still a limit.
So trying to burn more money in this aspect presented some difficulty.
But Pei Qian had another approach: add more service personnel!
Generally, zoos don’t need many service personnel, at most just to direct visitors. The animals are all kept in cages, and visitors just walk by and take a look, without needing guidance from service personnel.
Pei Qian pondered that although zoos typically don’t have this need, he could create the demand!
There’s a type of “indoor zoo” that mainly houses small animals. And some small animals, like lizards, snakes, hamsters, owls, angora ferrets, and so on, can be touched directly.
If visitors were allowed to touch these animals, wouldn’t that require staff to guide them?
Take owls for instance. Abroad, there are owl cafés where people can interact with the birds, though they can only touch the feathers on the head, not other parts.
In the future, staff could guide visitors, first sanitizing hands with instant hand sanitizer, then following staff instructions to pet the owl’s head, or perhaps wear a special arm guard for the owl to perch on for interaction.
All interactive small animals would have two or three staff members attending to them, wouldn’t that arrange for many employees?
These employees would be mostly idle, yet earn good salaries—weren’t they perfect tools for his plan?
Considering this point, the zoo’s form would also need to change. It would be best to divide it into two different exhibition areas: one displaying wild animals that can only be viewed through cages, and the other like many indoor zoos, exhibiting animals that can be touched and interacted with up close under staff supervision.
The old industrial area had many abandoned factory buildings that could be renovated to create an indoor zoo, which would be perfect.
In addition, some space would be allocated, interspersed throughout various areas of the zoo, for visitors to rest, avoiding the predicament of touring a zoo for hours with nowhere to sit.
The key was to occupy more land!
In the end, a huge zoo with not many animals when all added up, and mostly common ones at that—surely no one would come, right?
After finalizing these points, Pei Qian nodded with satisfaction.
Hmm, not bad!
According to the current plan, it wouldn’t become popular within a year, right?
As long as the initial phase went relatively smoothly, proving this model was feasible, they could continue to expand the scale, increase investment, and happily burn money.
Of course, all these ideas Pei Qian had were particularly crude and basic. After all, he wasn’t a professional and didn’t understand the details. This strategy was developed purely based on information found online.
In a couple of days when Tan Xinzhang arrived in Jingzhou, Pei Qian planned to have a good talk with him, sharing these ideas to establish the zoo’s direction while also seeking his opinions to see if there were any better improvement plans for this zoo.