{"id":72922,"date":"2025-07-17T16:02:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T07:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jul\/17\/restaurant-china-baby-lion-cuddles-menu"},"modified":"2025-07-17T16:02:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T07:02:14","slug":"restaurant-in-china-criticised-for-putting-baby-lion-cuddles-on-menu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=72922","title":{"rendered":"Restaurant in China criticised for putting baby lion cuddles on menu"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Diners jump at chance to snuggle with cubs but wildlife experts accuse firm of \u2018exploiting wild animals for selfies\u2019<\/p>\n<p>A restaurant in northern China has been criticised by animal welfare groups for offering an unusual item on the menu: lion cub cuddles.<\/p>\n<p>According to a screenshot of a menu circulating on social media, Wanhui \u2013 a restaurant in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province \u2013 has a four-course set afternoon menu costing 1,192 yuan ($166\/\u00a3124) that includes playtime with the in-house animals.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jul\/17\/restaurant-china-baby-lion-cuddles-menu\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Diners jump at chance to snuggle with cubs but wildlife experts accuse firm of \u2018exploiting wild animals for selfies\u2019A restaurant in northern China has been criticised by animal welfare groups for offering an unusual item on the menu: lion cub cuddles.A&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4154,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[586,265,41,50,65,311,382,94,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animal-welfare","category-animals","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-environment","category-food","category-restaurants","category-wildlife","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4154"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72922"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72923,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72922\/revisions\/72923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}