The tiny figure of a 3-year-old girl wavered and wobbled on one foot, her little arms outstretched in an effort to maintain her balance on the tightrope. Below the diminutive daredevil, nine Siberian tigers — hungry Siberian tigers — looked up at her as if waiting for a snack to fall out of the sky.
The scene unfolded at a zoo in China, where an aerialist act has thrilled — and offended — spectators with acts of derring-do performed on a 50-meter-long tightrope stretched 29 feet above the tigers’ habitat. Although there are other elements to the act, the unquestioned star is Xiaoyan, whose father has billed her as the world’s youngest tightrope walker.
Xiaoyan actually is blown off the wire by high winds. Only a cable shackled to the high wire and attached to a harness prevented her from becoming tiger chow. Still, the toddler reportedly told the media that she’s afraid of tigers, explaining, “They can bite.”
I was undecided whether I should go with the generic “there go the Chinese again, slaving-driving their young children into gymnastics right out of the womb” joke, or “tight-rope walking across a pit of Siberian tigers… just another form of Chinese population control.” So I went with both.
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