To packed crowds, clapping their hands with glee in the open-air arena, it is the highlight of their trip to the zoo. Never mind the wild animals cooped up in captivity in their enclosures - this is the moment when the native black bears put on a show all of their own.
With benign expressions that make it look as if they may even be enjoying themselves, the bears are run through their cruel programme of party tricks.
One sits hunched forlornly on a moped, forced to hang on for its life while the machine putters across a high wire at Zhengzhou Zoo in Nanjing, southern China.
Two more cling to the backs of horses as they gallop around the ring. Others are made to push children's scooters across the dirt. Another is harnessed to a rickshaw so that a lucky member of the public can have a ride.
In bright red and yellow costumes, the handlers - including an acrobat on a trapeze beneath the high wire - milk the applause.
Meanwhile, the bears' parents are held captive on farms where they are milked for their bile.
In China, where up to 20,000 bears still live in the wild, as many as 7,000 are tortured in this way.
Their digestive fluid is drained through grotesque stomach tubes for use in traditional Chinese medicine. Often the bear cubs are taken from their mothers to be trained in the similarly outdated traditions of the circus.
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