(SCMP) - Failing attraction in scenic Guilin, a tourist destination in southern China, is a pitiful front for a sinister trade in tiger bone wine, writes George Knowles.

In a shabby, concrete arena of broken plastic seats, shrill pop music blasts out as a ringmaster in a purple suit uses a metal rod to strike a tiger balancing on top of a large plastic ball and moving in alarming jolts across the ring's dirt floor. The animal snarls half-heartedly as three other tigers stare impassively from a row of stools. Then, one after another, they go through a tired routine of stunts, jumping through hoops and sitting to order before being chased out of the ring into cages below.

There follows 25 minutes or so of tamer, but equally questionable, circus entertainment, such as chained bears and monkeys riding bicycles and a goat walking a high wire with a monkey clinging to its back, met with a smattering of applause from a pitifully small audience.

This sad spectacle plays out at 2.30pm every day at the Xiongsen Bear and Tiger Mountain Village, in Guilin, southwestern China, and - in the three decades since the park opened - has never been less popular or drawn smaller audiences than the rows of near-deserted seats suggest is the case now. This used to be one of the city's premier tourist attractions, but on a Thursday in March, when we visited, just three people attended the show. Two days later, there was a weekend afternoon audience of fewer than 30.