When my oldest son was living in China for a year we decided to visit him during the Christmas holidays. We had a fantastic three weeks of traveling through five cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an, Wuhan (the city where Ash was living), and Hong Kong. This was the year before China hosted the Olympics. China was changing from a third world country to a formidable world power. What we noticed were the number of affluent people now living in China. Sure the majority of people still were poor and a dinner for nine people still cost a years’ salary of $40, but we also saw people in Hong Kong who after only a number of years as an independent autonomous trade zone, was doing quite well. One thing that stuck in all of our minds was the number of people we saw with pets. True that there have always been pets in china but on this trip to china we noticed the increase of pet stores. When people have extra money to spend and little room or in the case of china a limit on children they will put their extra money on their pets. I was reminded of this fact when I saw tonight’s CNN report of the increased number of owners in China who are dyeing their pets. You can read this report at:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/08/27/china.dyeing.dogs.pandas/index.html?hpt=C2
Do you remember when The Animal Planet tried to get on the contestant bandwagon with the TV show Groomer Has It? On that show they often dyed animals to increase the beauty of the animals they were asked to groom. I thought they all looked incredibly ugly. Who would dye a dog blue or like dye it to look like the owner’s favorite wild animal or athletic team mascot? Now China is finding that they like the colorful look of their dogs all dyed up to look like other animals (animate and inanimate). If I asked my oldest son about this latest Chinese fad he would say that it is sooooo Chinese. I agree with that.
For example, during our Christmas trip, we stayed in a Wuhan hotel that was having a holiday celebration on Christmas Eve. This was the strangest conglomeration of East meets West that I have ever witnessed. They had about twelve Santas parading down a neon lighted runway who were met by angels coming down ropes from the ceiling with pictures of beer. When the Angels met the Santas they had a beer chugging contest. Then came a parade of Disney characters including Mickey and Minnie Mouse. They had little Chinese children dressed up in Halloween costumes like Batman and ballerinas. They played loud rock music until two in the morning and all the alcohol was gone. Now that is Chinese.
I am not surprised that the Chinese like to dye their pets. They like to have colorful reminders of what makes them happy. Why not? They live in relatively small places and have relatively small numbers of “extras” in their life. Their pets get lots of attention when they are dyed. This is also socially interacting behavior simular to the Germans who take their little Dachshunds to all the pubs and out for walks. The attention surrounds the dogs and owners gets them engaged with others. It’s a social phenomenon that works for the Germans and is now working for the Chinese. They take their little dyed dogs out on walks and they meet other people who socially engage with them in conversations about how cute their dogs look and about their own little dogs. It’s getting people to talk to each other. How wonderful our dogs are?
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