Harbin, China, August 15, 2025: Indonesian teenager Rafif Putra had the experience of a lifetime when he was the lucky one picked to give a Siberian tiger a morsel of chicken.
In the second timeout from their lessons, on and off ice, athletes and coaches at the Asian Figure Skating Youth Camp were taken to the Harbin Siberian Tiger Park on Friday, August 15.
“It was awesome,” said Rafif after he fed a giant tiger with a piece of chicken held in his shaking fingers by kitchen forceps. Despite the fence cover, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see into the maw of the largest tiger on earth.
“We have Bengal Tigers in India, but they are much smaller,” contributed Indian skater Aarush Tiwari. “These guys are huge.”
The athletes and coaches got on three buses at the entrance to the park. The bus windscreens were covered in steel bars as were the outer side of the wheels. Visions of what happened at Jurassic Park flitted through the mind of this writer as he boarded the bus.
Thankfully the 40 minute ride through five sections of the park went smoothly with the only ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ coming at the sight of the tigers out in the open – the humans were the once caged on this occasion.
Covering an area of 1,200,000 square metres, the park is considered as the one and only place in the world to admire the purebred and scarce Siberian tiger, aka Manchurian tiger, which is an endangered animal.
Well, there were hundreds of them – the blurb says the park has 600 – and from the comfort and safety of the buses, photos and videos were shot on smartphones, capturing memories for a lifetime.
But the most poignant moment came in the Walking Area, when a visitor, not from this group, bought a live chicken – they are on sale - and then pushed it through a chute into the jaws of a hungry tiger. It seemed as if the chicken knew its fate.
Guess what was on the menu for dinner back at the hotel – chicken.
