The China boom in pet markets, dog breeding and pet cremation, and the restaurants still serving dog meat (tasty but tough)
Tens of millions of Chinese have registered pet dogs, market stalls and online agencies selling all manner of pets are popular, and services from pet hospitals to shelters to crematoriums have sprung up – but dog is still on some menus
Guangzhou resident Liang Xiaodi is smitten by her 14-month-old puppy. Alai is a precocious chocolate Labrador who gets excited when he meets human visitors, but becomes timid when he encounters other dogs.
Liang, 39, believes his temperament stems from an illness Alai suffered when he was abandoned by his previous owner at about three months old. A member of the public found him and took him to the animal hospital from where Liang adopted him, and where Alai was treated with cheap medicine that rotted his teeth.
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She says Alai is always anxious when he is out walking beyond the walls of Liang’s apartment compound in the southern Chinese city. “He is so stressed out that when he comes back home he naps for four hours, but we are slowly getting him socialised,” says Liang, who works in marketing and branding for a technology company.
Liang and her husband’s commitment to Alai are a sign of how much attitudes towards pets have changed since China began to open up in the late 1970s.
Pet ownership was branded as bourgeois after the communists came to power in 1949. Dogs were merely another source of sustenance. They could be seen hanging skinned in food markets and listed as a delicacy on restaurant menus.
In the past few decades, however, as Chinese citizens have become wealthier, pet ownership has skyrocketed.
