Weird Weekend: Milu Park Museum

To celebrate International Museum Month we returned to some of Beijing’s more niche museums for a look around. Our team found the aging exhibits just as bizarre and pleasantly surprising as we’d remembered.

Milu Park Museum (麋鹿公园博物馆)

Milu Park is a sweeping eco-reserve that once served as imperial hunting grounds for the Qing Dynasty. The park was originally built in 1985 as a preservation and research center for its namesake – the brawny, antlered species native to the subtropics of China, also known as Père David's deer – but now functions as a public space where visitors can enjoy nature and see various species of wildlife up close.

The Milu Museum itself is situated in a tall, white, air-conditioned building at the end of the park that feels towering and out of place in the surrounding nature expanse. The exhibit is sparse – just a single room outlining the background of the Milu – making the landscape the real attraction here.

Life-size statues of Milu stare out from behind a glass partition while wall displays relay the roller-coaster trajectory of the Milu’s rise and fall: after being wiped out in China at the end of the 19th century due to illegal export and famine, the Milu were finally reintroduced to their homeland in 1985, when the descendants of an English aristocrat who had collected specimens from various European zoos donated the resulting offspring to China. That donation was the impetus behind Milu Park.

Outside, “Milu Deer Watch Stations” are scattered along the 3km of track around the reserve, but alas, the shuttle driver tells me, the heat has driven them all into the protective shade of the forest. The prairies stretch empty and blank before me: not a Milu in sight.

Not that the other attendees seem to mind. They are as equally fascinated by the birds – white and black swans; peacocks; and azure-winged magpies, their names and pictures introduced on wooden plaques outside their natural habitats. Demoiselle cranes and green sandpipers alike float freely in and out of the public space through fixed gaps in the chain-link fence separating animal habitat and human haunt.

Milu Park can feel underwhelming at times, but ultimately it’s heartening to know that, just south of Beijing’s dense smog, there is a sprawling expanse of clean, raw nature dedicated to preserving China’s biodiversity. In any case, it’s a nice place for a school field trip or a family outing on a free afternoon. Just don’t forget to pack your sunscreen and a pair of binoculars.

Milu Park麋鹿公园
Tue-Sun 9.30am-12pm, 1-3.30pm, Fri 1-2.30pm. Nanhaizi Milu Park, Daxing District (8796 2105). 六兴区南海子麋鹿公园

A version of this article appears in the September 2013 issue of the Beijinger

Photos: Vivian Ludford