There's no PETA in China

I’ve never been a huge animal lover. Yeah, I might lean over to pet a neighbor’s dog, but my kids still don’t have a pet and unless they get serious about really begging me for one, they probably never will. However, you don’t have to be a big animal lover to feel sorry for the animals here in China.

When I first got here, I did notice that there wasn’t any wildlife to be found. I know Shanghai is a very urban area, but even out here in the suburbs where there is still a little green left, you never see so much as field mouse (unless you count the one I saw in the grocery store scurrying under the table of bananas). I’ve come to realize that the reason you don’t see any is because they are afraid - the Chinese are not very kind to their four-footed friends.

I told the story in one of my previous blogs about the stray dog that followed me into our neighborhood which a security guard then whacked with a bamboo pole. I’ve also heard complaints from a neighbor about locals throwing rocks at her own pet dog.

One of the worst things I’ve seen was during one of my morning runs. I was running along a back path with lots of bike traffic when I heard a goose honking behind me. I almost ducked, thinking it was flying right at my head, but then a guy on a motor scooter passed by me and he had about a half dozen white, long-necked geese tied to the back of his seat. They were hanging upside down by their feet and they were straining to crane their necks upward so that their throats wouldn’t scrape on the ground. I noticed a couple birds whose feathers that were already blackened from the road. It was not a pleasant sight - if you are going to kill them for food, fine, but do you have to torture them first?

I’m guessing part of the insensitivity to animals’ suffering is that here people can still make the connection between a live animal and dinner. In much of the developed world, we are used to seeing our meat already plucked, butchered, sanitized, and sealed in plastic wrap ready to cook and we rarely think about how it got there.

A woman from my Chinese class last year told the story of how her ayi (an ayi is a Chinese housekeeper) came back from her Chinese New Year holiday with a live chicken as a gift to this woman’s family. The ayi brought this chicken all the way back on the bus from her hometown in the countryside. The woman (who is American, by the way) knew this was a very nice gesture and she should be appropriately grateful, but when she walked into the kitchen right at the moment when the ayi was about the wring the chicken’s neck, she couldn’t help but let out an involuntary scream. She then did her best not to insult her employee while impressing upon her that although she appreciated the gift, she couldn’t deal with anything being killed in her kitchen. So after traveling I don’t know how many hours on a bus with a live chicken, the ayi went home that evening with the thing still clucking.

In Shanghai, there are still plenty of places where you can buy your food while it’s still alive - even in the big chain stores like Wal-mart and Carrefour. I was in Carrefour the other day passing by the tanks of fish and frogs and I saw this one turtle who was making a break for it. He had both of his front fins hooked over the edge of the tank and his little neck was sticking waaaay out of his shell, just wiggling his head back and forth like “I’m free! I’m gonna make it!” A couple of the store workers were watching it for a minute, laughing to each other until one of them bashed him on the head with a stick and he sunk back to the bottom. Poor little guy - he didn’t stand a chance, but I was rooting for him anyway.

Unfortunately, even creatures that aren’t food don’t fare too well in China. We’ve avoided going to the Shanghai zoo because we’ve been told it’s really appalling - the cages are small and the animals are in sorry shape. I read just today that 11 Siberian tigers starved to death in a zoo in Shenyang. The really sad part is that no one seems terribly surprised.

And let’s not forget the crickets - yes, even insects! Cricket fighting is a big pastime, with the really serious participants breeding their own fighters. But to be fair, it’s not just for the thrill of watching two bugs try to kill each other - they bet money, too, so it’s big business.

There are some activists in China trying to promote animal rights by rescuing mistreated pets and strays. But the sad truth is, it’s hard to get people to care about animal rights in a country where the humans don’t have many rights themselves.