A golden monkey enjoys a healing massage from a vet. 

A lot of dedication

The director of the hospital's veterinary laboratories, 58-year-old Ling Mingde, said that being an animal doctor was a sometimes lonely undertaking that required constant hard work and perseverance. "Only with a lot of dedication and persistence can an animal doctor feel happy in this work," he said.

Two years before he retires, Ling is currently responsible for running the pathology tests for all the animals in the park. He is also setting up a database and recording test results. In his office, there are piles of dog-eared books on veterinary science and biology. Ling also has a collection of over 25,000 test samples from animals as well as some rare photographs of great panda sperm and blood worms.

Ling said the demographic of the animal hospital staff varies from those born in the 1960s and the 1970s to the younger generations of the 1980s and the 1990s. They are all united by their love for animals.