Everybody's wild about the animal stars

After disseminating the pictures and videos of the handmade toys for animals on social media, many viewers, enamored of the animals, voluntarily offer to donate professionally made animal toys to the park.

Seventy percent of the animals' toys come by way of internet users' donations. Last year the park received about 700 donations, many from individuals, Qi said.

That gave him the idea of making animal stars, giving them names and personalities based on their growth, enriching the images of each animal and spreading their stories online.

"It's hard for people to bond with a species, but it's easy for them to like an individual animal at first, and gradually the species," he said.

His practice started with snow leopards, a large wildcat whose thick white-gray coat is spotted with large black patterns and which normally inhabits extreme landscapes about 2,500 to 5,500 meters above sea level.

The snow leopard is listed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species.

Between 3,500 and 7,000 snow leopards are thought to live in the wild today, of which China is home to about 2,000 to 2,500, Qi said.

In 2017 he began posting Princess Diary on social media, articles depicting the daily lives of snow leopards in the park in the tone and from the perspective of a 1-year-old snow leopard Aoxue, which means "braving the snow".

Aoxue is an artificially conceived snow leopard born in 2016 in the park.