{"id":3155,"date":"2015-01-18T05:00:40","date_gmt":"2015-01-18T13:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/?p=3155"},"modified":"2015-01-13T18:32:01","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T02:32:01","slug":"where-have-all-the-tigers-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/tiger-tail-soup\/where-have-all-the-tigers-gone\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Have All the Tigers Gone?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2014-12-23<\/a>During the holidays my family\u2014seven adults, one child and a teenager\u2014visited the Indianapolis Zoo<\/a>. Despite the unwieldy size of our group, we succeeded in staying together for a while. (The shark-petting pool<\/a> with its small hint of danger appealed to us.) Before long, though, some of us rushed through the snake house faster than others, and all bets were off.<\/p>\n

\"Peter,<\/a>Assuming we\u2019d find each other eventually, we wandered through the exhibits, enjoying two inquisitive walruses, and then three graceful giraffes and three huge dirt-loving rhinos.<\/p>\n

The sun was beginning to set by the time we reached the Tiger Forest Exhibit<\/a>. Leaning over the heads of fascinated children, I saw a lonely, nervous-looking Amur tiger, pacing so fast past the glass and over the rocks it was hard to get a clear picture of him.<\/p>\n

\"blurry<\/a>Later I learned there were other tigers inside, but my mood was already set. I couldn\u2019t help thinking about the worldwide near extinction of tigers. And about my late husband, Eugene, who was born in the Year of the Tiger.<\/a><\/p>\n

Before Eugene and I were married (and after) he told me stories about the tigers that lived in his home province of Fujian. There were thousands of wild tigers in China when he was a child. Thousands! In fact, the subspecies of tiger from his province is believed to be the root or ancestral tiger of all the tigers in the world. Yet now the Amoy tiger <\/a>(also known as the South China tiger) is almost certainly extinct in the wild.<\/p>\n

Why? Loss of habitat and Mao\u2019s \u201canti-pest\u201d campaign during the Great Leap Forward are factors. But human population growth is the biggest reason. In 1943, when Eugene was five years old, the population of China<\/a> was just over 531 million. In 2015, it will top 1.39 billion.<\/p>\n

Eugene\u2019s tiger story took place during WWII. He was five or six years old and living under Japanese occupation. The Japanese had confiscated all the good rice. The Chinese were left with rice that was so old it turned to dust when you pressed it between your thumb and forefinger. The Japanese also took pigs, chickens and goats, forcing the Chinese farmers into the mountains to hunt for small game.<\/p>\n

\"Chinese<\/a>

Chinese brush painting by Nicki Chen<\/p><\/div>\n

Competing with the tigers for wild pigs and tufted deer, farmers inadvertently forced the hungry tigers down from the mountains. Two such tigers swam to Amoy Island where they attacked a Chinese woman. Her husband shot one of the tigers but was too late to save his wife.<\/p>\n

When the Japanese soldiers arrived, they forbade the removal of the woman\u2019s body. They wanted to use it as bait for the tiger that got away.<\/p>\n

The following night, the second tiger returned, and a sharpshooter killed it.<\/p>\n

Both tigers\u2019 hearts, livers, and pelts were reserved for the Japanese officers; their meat, for the soldiers. Leftovers were sold to the Chinese.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll find the full story of how the two hungry tigers were shot and one hungry Chinese family made soup out of a chunk of tiger ‘s tail in my novel.<\/p>\n

\"my<\/a>Tiger Tail Soup<\/em> is available in bookstores and on Amazon.com<\/a> and barnesandnoble.com.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"my<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the holidays my family\u2014seven adults, one child and a teenager\u2014visited the Indianapolis Zoo. Despite the unwieldy size of our group, we succeeded in staying together for a while. (The shark-petting pool with its small hint of danger appealed to us.) Before long, though, some of us rushed through the snake house faster than others, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,155,438,6,437],"tags":[47,663,660,661,665,664,925,662],"class_list":["post-3155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-family","category-historical-fiction","category-tiger-tail-soup","category-wwii-in-china","tag-amoy-tiger","tag-amur-tiger","tag-indianapolis-zoo","tag-shark-petting-pool","tag-south-china-tiger","tag-tiger-forest-exhibit-at-indianapolis-zoo","tag-tiger-tail-soup","tag-walrus"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Kn1e-OT","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4937,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/tiger-tail-soup\/translation-is-that-what-i-wrote\/","url_meta":{"origin":3155,"position":0},"title":"Translation: Is That What I Wrote?","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"April 10, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"My novel looks so different in translation. I look at all those Chinese characters and I wonder, is this really my novel? If only I could read Chinese! I did study it for a while. But that was years ago, and with the passage of time, the words just slipped\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "books"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"by Gracenotes","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/by-gracenotes-Wikipe-tan_shocked.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3270,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/tiger-tail-soup\/the-great-tiger-hunter-of-fujian\/","url_meta":{"origin":3155,"position":1},"title":"The Great Tiger Hunter of Fujian","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"February 22, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 Man from Tennessee Kills 48 Amoy Tigers. When Harry R. Caldwell lived in China during the first half of the Twentieth Century, no one worried about the extinction of the Amoy tiger. In those days it was a point of pride for any man to kill a tiger, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "book reviews"","block_context":{"text":"book reviews","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/book-reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"2012 Suedchinesischer Tiger\" by J. Patrick Fischer ","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/2012-Suedchinesischer-Tiger-by-J.-Patrick-Fischer-Own-work.-Licensed-under-Wikimedia-Commons--1024x798.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/2012-Suedchinesischer-Tiger-by-J.-Patrick-Fischer-Own-work.-Licensed-under-Wikimedia-Commons--1024x798.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/2012-Suedchinesischer-Tiger-by-J.-Patrick-Fischer-Own-work.-Licensed-under-Wikimedia-Commons--1024x798.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":8292,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/tiger-tail-soup\/a-new-cover-for-tiger-tail-soup\/","url_meta":{"origin":3155,"position":2},"title":"A New Cover for Tiger Tail Soup","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"August 2, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"My novel, Tiger Tail Soup, was first published in 2014. (How time flies!) People bought it and read it and wrote reviews. And then--surprise, surprise--the publisher went out of business. What to do? I could do nothing and allow it to disappear from the marketplace. I could search for a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "books"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/IMG_2552-1-rotated-e1596057814667.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2264,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/tiger-tail-soup\/favorite-excerpts-from-author-part-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":3155,"position":3},"title":"Some News about My Novel and More Short Excerpts","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"August 28, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Tiger Tail Soup: A novel of China at war by Nicki Chen For a long time I've been promising that Tiger Tail Soup would soon be available as an ebook. Now at last it is. For those of you who like to read on your Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "China"","block_context":{"text":"China","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/china\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"photo courtesy of Wootang01","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/3503514763_0b9ee8b500_n.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9817,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/china\/year-of-the-tiger-what-will-it-hold\/","url_meta":{"origin":3155,"position":4},"title":"Year of the Tiger. What Will It Hold?","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"February 6, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"For the past two years we\u2019ve been asking our scientists and doctors, politicians, stock-and-bond gurus, and friends to predict the future. Tell us, we demand, when will the pandemic be over? When will everything get back to \u201cnormal\u201d? Or, what will the new normal be like? Even when they've dared\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "China"","block_context":{"text":"China","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/china\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/tigers2-web.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/tigers2-web.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/tigers2-web.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4412,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/tiger-tail-soup\/4412\/","url_meta":{"origin":3155,"position":5},"title":"Twelve Authors and Their Books","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"November 12, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Today I\u2019m teaming up with eleven other authors for an ebook sale. For the next ten days you\u2019ll be able to load up your Kindle, Nook, iPad or phone with some new reading material for less than you\u2019d spend on a trip to Starbucks. This is how it works. 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