The Year of the Dog dawns on Sunday, but it brings mixed fortunes for man's best friend in a culture where people increasingly keep canines as pets while others condemn them to the cooking pot.
Once banned as a bourgeois luxury, pet ownership is becoming big business in China and, with one in every nine Chinese now owning a dog, they are beginning to enjoy the status pampered pooches have in some other parts of Asia.
Owners from Taipei to Tokyo spend thousands of dollars on their furry friends at grooming parlors which offer pedicures, acupuncture and massages along with a more usual coat trim.
PHOTO: AFP
Dogs there even have their own cafes, funeral homes and schools.
But they remain the lucky ones.
Canines are still commonly eaten as a delicacy in China and Chinese communities around Asia. Others are skinned alive for their fur to make trimming for clothing and fashion accessories.
Up to 10 million dogs are slaughtered every year in China, many killed slowly and cruelly to supposedly enhance the meat's flavor, according to Jill Robinson, founder and chief executive officer of the Hong Kong-based Animals Asia Foundation.
"People's attitudes have been changing over the past 15 years, but China is still the world's biggest consumer of dogs," Robinson said.
In northern China large dogs such as St Bernards and Tibetan Mastiffs were being cross-bred with local dogs to create fast-growing, large meat dogs that could be slaughtered as young as four months old, she said.
Even in cosmopolitan cities such as Beijing, dog restaurants remain part of the cityscape, most popular in winter as dog meat is supposed to keep you warm and tastes like beef according to those who have tried.
Skinning of live dogs for fur also takes place in China, mainly because it helps preserve the skin of the canines, according to animal activists.
Yu Fachang, an official in charge of market order at the State Administration of Industry and Commerce, this month confirmed the practice was ongoing.
"Currently, in some parts of the country, in some animal markets, animals are skinned alive, like cats and dogs. It's individual cases taking place at individual markets," he said.
"We still don't have any laws on the slaughtering of ordinary animals such as cats and dogs, as they do not belong into the category of traditional food," he said, adding that regulation was being prepared.
Rock star Paul McCartney said last November that he would never perform in China after watching a disturbing secret video of dogs and cats in a market being slaughtered for fur.
The video, from the German branch of the animal rights group PETA, shows caged dogs in wire cages being hurled from the top deck of a converted double-decker bus onto a concrete pavement at a market in southern China.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS