A number of Chinese people have told me that for old people, China is heaven and America is hell, while for children, America is heaven and China is hell. Although there may be a kernel of truth in this saying, it strikes me as too simplistic. There are plenty of affluent retirees living full and rewarding lives in the United States; not every American senior citizen is languishing in a hellish nursing home. As for children, not all, but most of my Chinese friends' children would be considered spoiled brats by any culture. If these little emperors and empresses are in hell, they're the devils running the show.
What is clear to me, however, is that for animals, China is the undisputed hell.
I'm not even talking about the most extreme cases such as eating newborn mice. This dish is called "The Three Shouts." The baby mouse squeals its first shout when it is picked up with chopsticks, the second when it is dunked in soy sauce, and the third when it is chewed. Fortunately, as vegetarians, we are never offered this dish.
Rather, I'm talking about the day-in-day-out kind of brutality. Rarely a day passes without seeing a live chicken or duck dangling upside down from bicycle handlebars on its way to the kitchen. Horses are beaten, cats are chained, and dogs destined for dinner are tightly packed into cages.
One of my graduate students recently asked me the meaning of the word "sentient." I said, "It's having the ability to think and feel, so we would say that people and animals are sentient, but rocks are not."
"Excuse me, you said people but NOT animals are sentient?" he asked.
"No, I said people AND animals can think and feel. Rocks cannot."
"You think animals can think and feel?" He covered his mouth with his hand and giggled as if surely his teacher was making a joke.
"Of course! Animals can think and think and feel, but they can't speak, at least in ways we understand." I decided not to mention my feeling that plants may also be sentient.
"I don't agree," he said, now laughing openly. Why was I not surprised?
And yet I think China's attitude towards animals is changing, at least when it comes to pets. For decades under Mao, pet dogs and cats were forbidden in cities, and most people's income at that time would have made even the most basic pet care expenses prohibitive. Certainly some rural households had cats or dogs, but those were animals with jobs to do, and were not considered objects of affection.
What people did have were pet birds. While to me, Chinese birdcages seem sadly small, in other respects, birds are treated quite well, especially if they sing. Their owners will use chopsticks to deliver live worms or insects into the bird's little porcelain dinner bowl, or even directly to its beak, and devoted owners will "walk" their birds in the morning, taking the whole cage for a little fresh air stroll that may culminate at the local park. There you can see bird cages hanging from trees while the owners take bets on the singing ability of their pets. This is taken quite seriously and I was once scolded for inadvertently getting too close to one feathered competitor.
During the first month I ever spent in China, in 1997, we traveled through several provinces and saw exactly two dogs (both Pekingese). On my second trip to China in 1999, we spotted a few cats chained outside doorways and noticed another Pekingese or two. But when we came to Kunming in 2000, we discovered we were living just a few blocks from a pet market where all kinds of pets from dalmatians and poodles to parakeets and tropical fish were available. Even on buses, we would see people holding small dogs or tiny hamster cages on their laps.
In our first month in Kunming this year, we've already seen leashed dogs parading through departments stores and supermarkets. What's more, the pet market now includes several veterinary clinics.
When I asked my graduate students to write about the most important thing that happened to them this year, one student wrote not about taking the very tough entrance exam and being admitted to graduate school. Instead, she wrote about falling in love with a puppy being sold outside Walmart. Despite her husband's objections, she could not resist buying the little dog, and before long, her husband was equally smitten. They call the dog Little Son, and she pointed out in her essay that she referred to the pup as "he," rather than "it," because she thought of him as her first child.
Now that's a dog that's never going to be eaten!
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