A grinning man clad in army fatigues brandishes a rifle, a dead boar lies at his feet. Leaves are stuck to his hunting helmet and an ammunition belt stuffed with gun cartridges hugs his portly waist. His image, plastered all over Beijing's subway, is the face of a new hunting reserve, a half day's drive from the capital.
East International Hunting Place, which allows guests to shoot deer, wild boar, foxes, pheasants and endangered leopards, sprawls over a so-called protected primeval forest near Taiyue Mountain in Shanxi province . 'You will find boundless joy in hunting here,' the reserve's website boasts.
While the park's investors are hoping hunting will become the new golf for China's nouveaux riches, a media backlash against the advert may be one of the first signs that mainlanders are slowly gaining a passion for animal welfare.
'It's disgusting,' the Beijing Morning Post quoted one commuter as saying. Another asked: 'What age are we in? Time is running out for the world to save wild animals and then to put such a poster in the subway advertising the killing of animals for entertainment.'
Cao Jieming, an environmental activist and former editor-in-chief of the magazine Greenness, pointed out the irony of setting up a hunting park for the rich to ride around in jeeps and chase animals with dogs, while the country's wildlife was increasingly threatened by urbanisation and population pressures.
'Many of China's environmental protection laws exist only on paper; they are never put into practice,' Mr Cao said. 'So now we have the absurd situation where in a country which has national-level legislation on animal protection you have a hunting park advertised in the subway. Don't you think it is very bold and outrageous?'