dogs rise in status in China

BEIJING — Xiangzi — meaning ‘Lucky’ in English — is aptly named. A trim Siberian husky, his owner, a sports marketer named Qiu Hong, pampers him with two daily walks, a brace of imported American toys and grooming tools, $300 worth of monthly food and treats and his own sofa in her high-rise apartment.

When city life becomes too blase, Qiu loads Xiangzi in the car and takes him out for a run — on the trackless steppes of Inner Mongolia, seven hours north.

Twenty years ago, there were hardly any dogs in Beijing, and the few that were here stood a chance of landing on a dinner plate. It remains possible even today to find dog-meat dishes here. But it is far easier to find dog-treat stores, dog websites, dog social networks, dog swimming pools — even, for a time recently, a bring-your-dog cinema and a bring-your-dog bar on Beijing’s downtown nightclub row.

How this came to be is, in some ways, the story of modern China as well. Centuries ago, China’s elite kept dogs as pets; the Pekingese is said to date to the 700s, when Chinese emperors made it the palace dog — and executed anyone who stole one.

But in the Communist era, dogs were more likely to be guards, herders or meals than companions. Both ideological dogma and necessity during China’s many lean years rendered pets a bourgeois luxury. Indeed, after dogs first began to appear in Beijing households, the government decreed in 1983 that they and seven other animals, including pigs and ducks, were banned from the city.

China’s economic renaissance changed all that, at least in the prosperous cities. “People used to be focused on improving their own lives, and they weren’t really acquainted with raising dogs,” Qiu said. “But with the improvement in the economy, people’s outlooks have changed. There’s a lot of stress in people’s lives, and having a dog is a way to relieve it.”

Mostly, though, it appears that Beijing dogs have, as in the West, become objects of affection — even devotion — by their owners. On a given weekend, hundreds of dog owners flock to Pet Park, a 29-acre canine spa east of Beijing that includes a dog-and-owner restaurant, a dog show ring, a dog agility course, a dog cemetery and chapel, a dog-owner motel, an immaculate 600-bay kennel (where visitors must step in a disinfectant vat before entering) and two bone-shaped swimming pools.