Lao Luo, 82, built a zoo at the foot of Phoenix Mountain in Hubei Province. As the director of the zoo, he has been on the mountain for 33 years. Born in the 1940s, he has no scientific breeding knowledge or modern animal welfare concepts, but no matter how strange the animals are, he can basically feed them.

Whether it is one person's zoo, the loneliest zoo or the smallest zoo in China, on the Internet, Lao Luo's zoo is immersed in a romantic filter. But this is a clearly outdated zoo, all designed in the style of zoos of the last century. A monkey is chained and can only move in a quarter circle with a radius of one meter; a Tibetan mastiff with long hair has clumped feces stuck to it; two salamanders are kept in a red plastic In the basin, it is like aquatic products to be slaughtered in a restaurant. In order to make money, after Lao Luo raised two sows in the zoo last year, the zoo stinks even more, often making tourists call it unbearable.

Lao Luo, whose full name is Luo Yingjiu, is the director, cleaner, breeder and ticket seller of the Phoenix Mountain Zoo. In the 1980s, there were often people selling wild animals in the market. Lao Luo couldn't bear it, so he bought them one by one. Then there were more and more animals. In 1989, the Municipal Party Committee of Enshi City, Hubei Province invited Lao Luo to use his animals to set up a zoo for the people of Enshi, so Lao Luo took the animals and moved his family to Phoenix Mountain.

Most of the animals in the Phoenix Mountain Zoo are old, weak and sick: the peacock has no tail, the black bear has a broken palm, and the old monkey is blind. Some of these injuries are caused by zoo visitors, and some are coming to the zoo It has already fallen before, and Lao Luo has no financial resources to introduce healthy and beautiful animals. It is precisely because of those defects that Lao Luo was able to picked up.

The oldest animal in the park is a bear named Guangguo, which he rescued from someone else's dining table for 3,000 yuan.

In 2007, CCTV made a documentary about him; since 2019, it has been officially remodeled twice, and the place is still full of stench for decades. After Lao Luo's deeds were reported, netizens spontaneously initiated donations for the zoo. But the animals have to eat 400 yuan of feed every day, and the tickets plus Lao Luo's pension can't fill the loophole of funds. In order to attract more tourists, he lowered the ticket price from 20 yuan to 10 yuan, but the effect was still minimal. On March 14 this year, his zoo only sold three tickets

Over the years, he has adopted nearly 20 puppies and two cats, etc. The departure of each animal is a great deal to Lao Luolai. It's all trauma.
Lao Luo is the ninth eldest in the family, and the remaining 11 brothers and sisters have all passed away. Lao Luo, who did not attend the funeral of his relatives, did not miss the farewell of any animal in the zoo. Emotions that are repressed in worldly life seem to be freely expressed in animals.