Three Stone Cats at the Wall

These two lions - a male and a female - have been guarding this building (which is part of the Great Wall) for several hundred years. How to tell the male from the female?

Look under the lifted front paw of each - the male has a globe-like orb under his (right front) paw, and the female has a new-born lion cub, on its back, beneath her (left front) paw. This pair of symbolic stone lions appeared in many in Beijing and Chongquig, but lions live in Africa and India, but not in China, I think - and tigers are found in Asia and not Africa.

So the mystery was why the ancient Chinese would have used lions as their icons, not tigers. But I assume the ancient Chinese would not have wasted so much precious stone and time making statues of the wrong cat. One person guessed that these WERE tigers, but tigers do not have manes.