The China Diaries: You Are What You Eat

A few months back, I went to an animal market. Some of you will remember the posting; it was one of my most popular, full as it was with the pictures I seem to be making a point of depriving you of. I enjoyed seeing the market, but it was the beginning of my awareness of a massive incongruity between Western and Asian culture.

It isn't unheard of in the west for people who sell animals to be, if not necessarily cruel, then neglectful to the animals they sell. But it is not the rule. It is uncommon and frowned upon. If you were to walk into a pet store and see countless animals in cages too small for them to turn around in, you wouldn't take it all that well. You would, if you're anything like me, be taken over by an impulsive need to purchase all the animals and liberate them. Look at this parrot from that day at the market:

I wanted to buy him. I couldn't believe the vendor would let this bird get to such a point. It's not unhealthy, but it's not being taken care of. It deserves better. In the hour or two that I was in that market, I saw crates full of turtles, cages with hundreds of hamsters crammed together, stacks of cages with rabbits, cats, and dogs, and birds in cages where the droppings of both birds present and past were piled high enough to form hills.

As it turns out, this mentality doesn't stop with vendors. The Chinese as a whole do not seem to view pets in the same way that we do. For the West, pets are a part of the family. A dog is as well-cared for as your children, and in many cases, from a proportional viewpoint, it's likely getting a better deal than your kids. The same is true for birds, cats, even fish. One of the girls who bought a dog that day in the market carries it around in a bag. Not a purse, but an actual bag. Like the ones you get at the checkout in Wal-Mart. When she bought the dog an outfit that looked vaguely like Superman's, another coworker took to throwing the dog, "to see if it could fly." There is a girl who works at my school who has lost her last two dogs. Just plain lost them. She doesn't know where they went. On two separate occasions, she took a dog out for a walk, and when she got home, it was gone. That leash laws are nonexistent in China supports my theory that the dog got wise and ran away, figuring that a life fending for himself in the food markets like this fellow would be preferable to being treated as a toy. What's truly incredible about that is that, for the whole walk, she didn't notice.

I started, internally at least, to get on a bit of a soap box about the whole thing. Maybe not out loud, but I was certainly feeling superior. The Chinese have no sense of empathy with other living things. How foolish are they?, I asked the rhetorical audience in my mind. It came to a head the other night, when I saw a girl playing with her pet rabbit while I was ordering food.

She was four or five years old. It started when I saw her taking the rabbit out its cage. In the West, this is usually accomplished by tilting the cage so that the animal comes out, if not of its own volition, than at least with some sense of gentility. This girl reached in and pulled the rabbit out by its face. It was terrible to watch. I wanted to tell her she was hurting it, but I don't know how to say that in Chinese. Then she kept pestering it, picking it up by its ears or trying to force its mouth open so she could look. She even forced its nose down against the concrete and then would look at it. I'm not sure what, exactly, she was looking to have happen with that. Young children inherently have no empathy, but her parents, who were right there, weren't saying anything to her either. To them, there was nothing to say. I fought several urges, the most powerful of which, ironically, was to step on her fingers as I walked by or to grab her face and ask her "Do you like that? No? Neither does he."

As I quietly fumed about it, and talked to the other teachers who were there, as we'd all noticed, a few interesting points were raised. My roommate said that empathy for animals is a luxury for the wealthy, and while I do think that has a bit of merit to it, that's his explanation for everything in China. "Waiting in line for things is a luxury of wealth". "Clean air is a luxury of wealthy". I believe some of that, but the poorest farmer in the U.S. is going to take the best care he can of what animals he has, whatever is in his means. Even the ones that aren't directly related to how he earns his living. Then another teacher raised what seemed like a daft point at first, but has slowly grown to be, for me, the answer to the whole thing.

Consider, in America, that cruelty towards a dog is in most cases viewed as worse than cruelty towards a human; there's almost no chance that dog has done anything to warrant it, and certainly hasn't done so with the conscious knowledge that he was doing something reprehensible to begin with. It is, within society, thought to be as bad as cruelty to an infant. You simply can't get away with it. But then what about chickens? What about veal? What about lobsters? When you eat something, your attitude towards it will fundamentally change. We don't eat dogs, and so we can afford to feel this attachment towards them. We don't eat cats. We don't eat parrots. It goes on and on. There are, of course, many exceptions to this on an individual basis; Vegetarians who don't eat meat for moral reasons, people who don't eat veal or non-farm-raised beef, etc. That dog is consumed in China doesn't feel like an excuse for the incident of throwing the dog to see if its Superman cape works. That rabbit is consumed in China shouldn't excuse that girl playing with her rabbit in the same manner I once played with G.I. Joes. But it does, doesn't it? While none of us may like that chickens are kept in coops the same size as the chicken when confronted with the issue, and many of us buy products that tell us, rest assured, that no such chickens were treated in this manner, it still happens. And most of us are still okay with it. Because we eat them. And, while you can love what you eat, you can't eat what you love.

The China Diaries: Abbott 和 Costello

 In Chinese, "没有”, pronounced "may yo", means "Without," or "It isn't," or any such thing. It essentially means "I don't have it" or "It doesn't exist."


If you go to a Subway in Xi'an, most of the employees will speak at least a sandwich-aware version of English, wherein you can list ingredients and they'll know what's going on. When they get to the sauces, and they ask if you want any, and you say "Mayo", there's almost always a moment of hesitation when they try and decide if you mean "Mayo" or "没有”.

It's the little things in life that keep you smiling.

The China Diaries: About Last Month...

As the rate of postings to the blog has dwindled to a measly post every month or so, I find myself faced with the reality of having become used, in at least some capacity, to China. It leaves me with a bit of a quandary. I want to post to The China Diaries more often, but I also want to continue to put my best effort to keep this from existing primarily as a diary. While I have certainly, on more than one occasion (this one included), indulged myself, I have for the most part tried to keep the focus on the culture, not on me, and I think I've done alright in that. Now, the urge to post more frequently regardless of the content is locked in a struggle with my editorial instincts, which say tis better to do infrequently and passionately than to do often and with disinterest.

I'm sure I'll somehow sort it out. In another three weeks, I'm going to Nanjing and Beijing for a week long vacation. That should provide some material, and certainly some pictures. In the next few weeks, I will be look into purchasing a small camera to use for day-to-day photos in a Picture of the Day feature, which I think could be rather a lot of fun. I apologize for the gaps in output. It is not my intent to be negligent. But I'm afraid most of what I could write about these days is not so different from what anyone else working a full-time job could write, whether they lived in China or not. That goes against what I try to do here, and so I am trying in some way to find a balance.

The China Diaries: To Market, To Market

Last week, I went to a market with some members of Chinese staff at my school. One of them was in the market for a bird or two. The others ended up impulse-buying dogs, which is not so unusual a thing to do in China. They don't seem to look at dogs as requiring the amount of care and responsibility we do in the West. Either way, I was there to document the events in pictures. This was the most crowded market I have ever been in, so many of these pictures aren't perfect. I could only fight the tide so often. As is always the case with Thoughts Dowinion, if you click on these photos you will be taken to a much larger picture.

You can buy many, many things in a Chinese market. While part of this one specialized in pets, other sections sold things as varied as hardware, tea sets, and, in this case, random animal parts. They are used for medicinal purposes. Some highlights from this picture include the giant fungus, the goat or impala horns, and the bear paw.

I don't know why these massive bowls were filled with egg, fish, some unidentifiable meat, and two spices, but I bet it smells amazing in the summer. I want to say they aren't for human consumption, but nothing in my experience of China would lead me to feel safe about that as an assumption.

Countless cages and containers full of hamsters could be found. The cages, for the record, are not that small, but all the hamsters in all of the cages liked to huddle together in these tight masses. Of all the animals in a market where PETA wouldn't be able file injunctions fast enough, the hamsters were probably the best-cared for.

Answering the life-long question "How do they get the turtles to the pet store." I took a few pictures before the owner of this store said "No no no no no."

The original purpose of the trip was for Agatha to buy a bird. She wanted a bird that could talk, but they all proved to be outside her price range. Her first step down the ladder was this lovely little guy. The next few photos are of different birds in the market. The only one I can name is the Budgie in the middle two pictures. They're all nice to look at, named or otherwise.




This little guy was in the running for purchase as well. Agatha spent about a minute trying to get him to talk before it was pointed out to her that he's not a parrot. This was of great disappointment, and so he was passed over. I liked him, though. He had character.

She settled on a pair o' keets. Here we witness the sexing of the birds. She wanted a boy and a girl so that they would reproduce one day. In the name of continuing the species, the birds had to undergo this humiliation. Perhaps the shared experience will have bonded them.

Here's the happy couple, already seemingly unaware of the embarrassment they've endured. Love heals all, apparently.
The birds were in one section of the market, the fish in another, and the cats and dogs in yet a third. Above, a man stares deep into the eyes of a puppy while holding his cigarette. The Chinese for the most part view dogs as accessories, I think. Not necessarily in the Paris Hilton sense of accessories, but they aren't viewed as a part of the family like they are in the states. For example:

When Jessica bought her dog, they gave it to her in a plastic bag, much as the checkout clerk at The Home Depot would give you your bundle of wire and new hammer in a plastic bag. She still carries it around in that bag, ten days later. Below, you can see him sans bag.

I am sorry for the lack of pictures of the market as a whole to give you a better idea of the area itself. I'll keep that in mind for future write-ups.

The China Diaries: Roll the Credits, Pt. 2

From the back of The Ides of March (great movie, by the way, and you should see it):

"Clooney plays the perfect story to the Democratic Party politician Michael Morris as the core, he was a genious, handsome, ambitious, full of leaders in the gas field, he assured the public that he would put it on their own honesty. Stephen is his team's media spokesman for the campaign, the moment of the recruits almost overshadowed the campaign team of the old leader Paul. But politics always slowly showing its own sinister..."

The China Diaries: Roll the Credits

I was asked by a friend to bring them one gift from China, if I should happen to find it; hilariously bad pirated copies of Beatles CDs. I told him that this would be impossible, as such things are hard to come across. Generally speaking, I think what's impressed me most about China has been the quality of their market for DVDs and CDs. You don't necessarily have to look hard to spot the inaccuracies that are tell-tale signs, but you do have to look. The slip covers are professionally printed and attractive. They use the real artwork from the movies, as opposed to hilarious cut'n'paste jobs. This is all, rest assured, thanks to the internet. They have definitely stepped up their collective game, whomever "they" are exactly.

You don't buy your DVDs from a man with a cart. I mean, you certainly can, but there are nice stores for this sort of thing. One of the favorite stores in Xi'an is a place where you can pick up just about any movie you want. Their selection rivals Target, and their prices certainly beat it. As China becomes more prominent in the global economy, they have been cracking down on pirates. Without copyright laws being protected, many lucrative aspects of the world economy will never come here to nest. This puts the Chinese government in a tricky position, though; the DVD market as it stands now may not be very profitable for the industries, but it's extremely profitable for the Chinese themselves, and they wouldn't make nearly what they do now as individuals from running a Fine, Upstanding Business. The store I speak of was raided shortly after I got here. A teacher walked in one day to find that most of the DVDs had quietly been removed, replaced only with the significantly more expensive, most likely genuine articles. For a short period of time, at any rate. It would seem some of compromise has been reached wherein everyone helps to Keep Up Appearances.

Back to the product itself; there have been massive improvements, certainly, but there are still errors. And some of them are funny, in a quiet sort of way. Beyond the normal typos, there are things that are just inconsistent. For example, the case for The Artist includes the Proof of Purchase for A Bug's Life), and my copy of The Descendants includes the production credits for A Night at the Museum, save for the fact that the title of the movie is still listed as The Descendants. My favorite one, without a doubt, is a little idiosyncratic addition to the cover of the first season of Six Feet Under. See if you can spot it.


Did you see it? If you didn't, look over Claire's shoulder into the mirror. You'll see that the good people of Fischer & Sons are being haunted by a ghost straight out of The Ring. If you've seen the show, you will probably think it's worth at least a chuckle. I think it's great. It's the best kind of false marketing. Another thing I noticed while writing this: The pictures on the back of the case for Season 1 are from the final two episodes of the series, and give away everything that happens if you pay attention to them. It's the little things.

* * * * *

Don't look at me like that. I told you they were quietly funny. I gave you massive trash fires, that was pretty cool from a more typical viewpoint, and five people looked at it. So now you get to hear about DVD cases. You did it to yourselves.

The China Diaries: The Towering Inferno

As China continues to wind down from New Years, a lot of things still aren't quite back to normal. The market next to my apartment, for example, is still less hustling and bustling than it was during its peak, as many businesses remain closed. Part of the problem, I would imagine, is the plethora of trash piles throughout the streets of the market. Below are a few pictures of the most impressive, which burnt steadily for two weeks as people continued to add rubbish to it. I should note that since these pictures were taken a few days ago, the trash has been removed. Still, it was quite a sight, and it was simply one of many such burning piles to be found in the market.




I apologise, I did not have my camera with me to take pictures during daylight.