What were all these sick animals—lions, wolves, camels, monkeys, gazelles, pandas, and zebras—doing on this dilapidated Chinese fishing boat, sailing past the famous frieze of colonial banks, trading houses, and clubs that make up Shanghai’s Bund? The city’s glass skyline of Pudong skyscrapers on the other side of the river only made this barnacle encrusted, almost Biblical ark filled with slumped, submissive creatures look more misplaced. No wonder the people on shore were perplexed. Why had Shanghai, a city recklessly proud of its miracle of modernity, allowed such a lugubrious, retrograde float to be paraded down its figurative main street? And where was this ship of the damned, loaded with broken-down animals, headed?