TO STROKE OR STIR FRY: Pet Ownership in a Dog-Eating Nation? By Graham Bond Dogs in China don’t have it easy, caught somewhere between being Man’s best friend and his favourite suppertime dish. Pet shop business is booming yet dogs are still routinely hung from trees and wok-fried for the evening meal.?

IF YELLOW THE DOG knows what’s coming, she doesn’t let on. While the noose is prepared, the two-year-old trots through the family home with ears pricked, eventually deciding on a spot in the yard to stretch out in the sunshine.

When the time comes, Yellow is fetched from her nap by 61-year-old owner, Jiang Airong. Taking its front paws in her hands, the grandmother-of-eleven leads the dog towards the tree on two legs. “Good girl, good baby”, she whispers. True to form, there’s no resistance. “We’ve had her for two years and she’s always been a good dog,” she says. In one movement, her eldest son Chen Liyi slips the rope over the dog’s head and pulls tight. It’s threaded between branch and trunk and heaved. Yellow’s resistance is muted, almost obedient. Occasionally she lashes a paw through thin air but the struggle is mostly silent. While Liyi pauses for a smoke, Mrs Jiang stands at the ready with a heavy wooden club, poised to strike if the knot should loosen. Having finished his cigarette and with the dog not yet dead, he takes the lead in beating Yellow around the head with a coarse metal pipe. All the time, his daughter watches. In the ten minutes it takes for her playmate to be killed for Sunday lunch, four-year-old Mei Ling barely looks away once.

It’s a crisp winter’s morning in the village of Jin Gui in Guangdong province where the sight of a dog hanging doesn’t warrant a second glance. As a hot, warming dish, dog is an established and essential part of the winter diet – an annual “treat” for this poor farming family. As a prestige food commodity, it’s perfect for today’s get-together of the extended Chen clan. Though Yellow had spent two happy years roaming the house, sleeping under the stove and playing with the children, she was bought at the market as food and time had not weakened the family’s resolve. They had hoped Yellow would provide them with puppies. Failure to do so was fatal. She suffered a miscarriage several months earlier, read by her owners as a sign of permanent infertility. Things might have been delayed had there been a clutch of cute puppies on the way. For death by hanging is not the whole story of a dog’s destiny in 21 st century China. Affluence is breeding a new attitude towards canines and, as much as they enjoy eating dog, the Chen family is not oblivious to the fact that, 15 miles away in the city of Zhaoqing, pet shop business is booming.

Lapping It Up

With the cold beginning to bite, Zheng Xuefang, 40, brings her daughter to the Mini Pet Shop to buy a coat for their puppy, Huan Huan. With the help of the hair stylist, who has drifted in from next door, they go through several outfits, trying on a traditional red silk qipao and a clinging bumble-bee sweater before settling on a dumpy pair of brown dungarees. Just to make sure, Liang Simin, 10, walks her dog up and down the middle of the store in a mock catwalk demonstration.

The store is filled with grooming products, from nail clippers to facial hair combs. Four shelves of Pedigree dog biscuits line the rear wall, along with an array of shampoos. Outside hangs a poster, a soft-focus close-up of a poodle poking its head through a pink heart. “I love this dog”, it reads and it seems to speak for an increasing number of people in the world’s most populous nation.

On the street, the sight of an immaculately groomed pooch clutched to the breast of its owner has become commonplace. In shops, household items from cushions to duvet covers are adorned with images of frolicking puppies. On the roads, parcel-shelf pooches stare out from car windows and dangle from rear-view mirrors. In Zhaoqing, a comparatively small city of one million people, there is no shortage of dog dentists in the phone book.

The New Urban Must-Have

A new hotline has been set up in Beijing to advise owners on raising their pets, offering information on the ever-changing rules and regulations and putting them in touch with vets from three dedicated pet hospitals. Last October in Shanghai, Dou’er the dog was sold for RMB 3,100 (just over £200) at the country’s first ever pedigree dog auction.

Most commentators see the phenomenon as an urban luxury, going hand in hand with increasing affluence and improving living standards over the last decade. Pet ownership has increased most significantly in the major metropolitan areas where wealth is concentrated. And the company of a dog comes at a price. In Guangzhou, the heaving southern city spearheading China’s “economic miracle”, a dog owning licence will set you back RMB 10,000 (almost £700) initially, with an additional annual fee.

A Chinese saying, from the heyday of Deng Xiaoping’s market reforms of the 1980s, has it that a truly rich man will live in his own house, drive his own car and raise a pet dog. “That was the time when lots of new culture and living styles were flooding into China and anything ‘foreign’ was seen as top class in peoples’ eyes,” explains student Lai Huiying, 23, who grew up in a house with a dog. “People in most foreign countries like to raise dogs and they became a symbol in our eyes. Rich people wanted to copy to show they had money.”

But dogs have become more than “foreign” status symbols. They have become playmates for China’s sibling-less children. They provide company for wives of husbands working increasingly long hours. They have become popular presents for the mistresses of businessmen. And pet ownership is not limited to the urban rich. “There are three kinds of people who bring dogs to my surgery,” says Mini Pet Shop manager and Get Well Pet Surgery vet Li Jian. “Rich people, old people and people who have warm hearts. What matters is whether you’ve got a heart for animals or not. “Owning a dog is a civilised thing,” he says, standing beside a “Dogs of the World” poster, which includes Chinese translations for varieties such as the Sussex Spaniel and the West Highland White Terrier. “It’s a way to reduce the pressure of daily life. They help working people to relax when they get home in the evening. And they give people, often poor people, company and pleasure. I know there are many poor people willing to pay more than they can afford to take care of their pets.”

The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Public Security confirms there’s no simple division between the dog-owning “civilized” urban rich and the dog-eating “backward” rural poor. Its statistics reveal most dog owners in the capital are middle and low-income earners, including the unemployed and single elderly people. A national debate is currently raging over whether Government benefits should be given to poor pet owners. In Nanjing , Jiangsu Province, officials have applied it as a means test, declaring money should be withheld from people who can afford the luxury of “raising a dog”. Most poor dog owners say their dogs survive on only leftovers and scraps.

The Occasional Best Friend

To further muddy the waters, raising a dog does not - apparently - prevent an owner from eating one. Eating dog remains popular in the city, as well as the countryside. Zhaoqing lawyer Mo Rujia bought Bobo four years ago to keep his wife company while he worked. The dog yelps away in the corner of the room as Mr Mo, 74, admits that he still enjoys the occasional dog meal “treat” - but only in restaurants. There’s no glimmer of hypocrisy or guilt, only a slight look of confusion at the question. If further proof were needed that dog-eating cannot be written off as a backward habit of the uneducated poor, dog meat can be found on the menu at university canteens.

Many, like the Chen family, fiercely defend their right to eat dog and slaughter them in a manner of their choosing. “It’s a tradition,” says Li Yi. “My children are watching me kill the dog this way and they will use the same way. Dog is good for the body. It makes you strong. And it’s delicious,” he says while dissecting Yellow’s carcass. The children, listening to the conversation, nod in agreement. “Everyone likes to eat dog. People in Hong Kong love it but they have to come to China to eat it because it’s banned there.”

Mr Li sees things differently. “Yes, it’s a tradition and it’s a speciality, especially here in Guangdong,” he agrees. “But slowly China is changing its habits. As life gets better and better, people no longer need to eat dog meat. Not so long ago people had to queue up to buy pork. Ten years ago I ate dog. Now I have no need to because I have other choices. When I’m out with my friends, they often suggest we have a dog hot pot. I say, ‘Let’s have lamb instead’.”

Mad Dog Disease

There is another, more sinister indicator of the popularity of dogs as pets - rabies. In the first nine months of last year 1,297 people died from the infection the Chinese call “Mad Dog Disease”, up more than 60 per cent on the same period last year. The Ministry of Health blames it on increasing pet numbers and claims it is the most dangerous infectious killer in the country, surpassing tuberculosis, AIDS and SARS, which killed 400 Chinese during last year’s epidemic.

Rabies outbreaks last summer ravaged a handful of provinces, including Guangdong. The reaction of the authorities was to ban dog ownership in many urban areas. Around Zhaoqing, posters have gone up advising owners that dogs seen by enforcement officers in the city would be killed, whether they were on the end of a leash or not. Owners were told to “stop feeding” their dogs and to “get rid” of them, one way or another.

But this hasn’t led to a rash of dog owners eating their pets. The ban is not Zhaoqing’s first and people have grown wise. Across the city, scores of owners now hide their dogs indoors, taking them for walks very early or very late under the cover of darkness. The pet shops remain open, albeit scaled down. “The ban won’t last,” predicts Mr Li, adding that 80 per cent of his business is dog related. “That’s why they haven’t closed us down. Even they know it’s not fair to destroy my livelihood, just because some dogs have bitten people. You can’t ban pet dogs just because one dog bites a person. It needs to be managed better than that. Just because a car crashes, you don’t ban cars.”

It’s a Dog’s Life

And so dogs in China remain on the run, caught somewhere between being Man’s best friend and his favourite suppertime dish. For some, a dog’s life is a pampered one. For others it remains nasty, brutish and short. Whether globalisation will change what are deeply entrenched traditions remains to be seen. In the mean time, there remains no real way of telling whether a distant yelp is the sound of a dog’s delight at an extra big bone or the sound of another one being strung up by the neck.

Graham Bond is a British journalist based in Guangdong province, China. He contributes stories and photographs to a variety of newspapers and magazines, including The Times and the South China Morning Post.