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In China, “Man’s Best Friend” has had a hard lot served him simply from the viewpoint of Chinese language culture. Recently, for the Year of the Dog, one popular gift, to offer wishes of prosperity, was the gift of a dog.

Unfortunately, this gift was seen no differently than the effigy of a dragon given during the Year of the Dragon or a pig during the Year of the Pig. Once the fun is over the gift is discarded. The recent Year of the Dog may be better coined “Year of the Dog’s suffering”. If a pig was given during the Year of the Pig no one would consider more than fattening it up to baste it with feelings that prosperity abounds. The recent Year of Dog was however, the year of the highest number of stray dogs in China.

Unlike pigs, dogs in China don’t frequently find themselves as a dish on the dinner table, as believed by many outside China. However, they may find themselves wandering the streets in search of their owners who just don’t know how to control them or feel they are too much trouble, thus either being “given away”, if lucky, or else just flat pushed out the door only left to their own fate. There is no Humane Society, SPCA, or humanitarian group pushing for animal rights in China. In the Chinese way of viewing this problem, too many people are without a secure and comfortable life, all the more reason to not feel concern for the “dumb beasts”. Dogs, pigs, horses, and donkeys would be in the category of having a dog’s life in this vast country of economic and material explosion.

From the first day I set foot into Chinese culture, in 1984, it has been a slow and steady realization that dogs, and pigs by the way, don’t have a good status in the values and ideals of the Chinese language. From “you sit taller than you stand. ” - calling someone a dog, whereby simply demeaning their existence, to “dog-feces” or “dog-fart”, which both express a strong feeling of something nonsensical or ridiculous; dogs don’t look good in the eyes of the Chinese language.

The explanation for the word “Dog” in the 2002 edition of the Modern Chinese Language Dictionary, the most prominent of all dictionaries in China is as follows:

Dog – An animal weaned on milk. Many variations (breeds). Strong sense of smell and hearing. Colors of fur are yellow, black, white, etc. It’s a beast of the home. Some can be trained to be police dogs, some help in hunting, shepherding, etc.

“Walking Dog”, is another expression that some of us may even be aware of in the English language. This expression, from how I understand it, was coined from a political viewpoint and was used strongly during the Japanese oppression and the Cultural Revolution to refer to someone who was helping the enemy or the other side.

“Dog Thing” or “Dog Style”, these two expressions are used to simply insult someone who has not met with your expectations or standards. There again simply adding the word for “dog” to the expression makes the meaning harsher and more insulting to the person being spoken to or referred to.

“Dog Eats feces”, is an expression used to make fun at someone when they are caught in a certain forward falling position. The Chinese have strongly committed to their minds, the fact that dogs eat feces. Unfortunately they seem to hold this against dogs, they don’t seem to have the concept that dogs can be trained and educated. When I got my dog and told friends and acquaintances that I was “educating” my dog they looked at me with stares of disbelief, some even said, as if I had lost my mind, “You can’t educate a dog!”

“Dog feces Pile”, this expression describes a person who is evil and hateful to the core.

“Dog Leg”, this expression refers to a person who is helping the bad guy.

“Dog Blood Spray Head”, this is an expression that is used to describe the severity with which someone cursed, i.e. He was cursing and swearing like a mad man.

“Dog Bites Dog”, this expression refers to the competitive conflict or struggle between evil people.

“Dog’s Battle Man’s Oath”, is an expression that describes the sly means that someone cheats or takes advantage of another person.

“Dog’s Mouth Doesn’t Spit Out Ivory”, this expression refers to the words spoken by an evil person; evil words.

When the word “dog” is used in a casual sentence, where people may also be in reference, particularly Chinese people, it can be a hair-raising event. The cultural mentality will immediately signal to them that the speaker is demeaning the Chinese people, eyes will flash and a wall will be erected on the spot. There is an expression in Chinese, “the speaker meant nothing, the listener heard something” once the listener has heard “what they thought they had heard” there is no escape from misunderstanding and the harder you try to rectify the problem the worse it gets, it’s best just left to the powers of paradox.

Once, after a workout when showering at the gym I got myself into trouble by making reference to a dog in a statement I made to a man showering next to me. He had found a need to cough up and spit out whatever he coughed up, I was on his left side and there was no one on his right. Of course, he had to spit to the left. I just told myself to ignore it. But he kept on. Finally I asked him if he would spit to the other side where there was no one standing. He looked at me with a blank stare as if he didn’t get it. I repeated my request. Again, dead stare. I felt that he was trying to deliberately see how far he could push me. At this I blurted out “Even dogs don’t spit! ” (an anatomical fact if you haven’t thought about it lately). Well he didn’t seem to have any problem understanding this and immediately began screaming and yelling and telling me what he was going to do to my mother. We could even say he was a “Dog Blood Spray Head”! I stood and watched his charade and listened to his insults and threats. He told everyone that I said that he was “as worthless as a pig or a dog” (a great expression in Chinese that will send chills up and down their spine.) My words were well misconstrued and he ran with it because no matter what, in China, the Chinese are always right and the foreigners are at their mercy in how we are perceived.

To say the least, my words had taken on a whole new meaning that I had not even considered myself! In his mind I had not only insulted him but the whole country; every man, woman, and child in China. It quickly became an international affair. Of course, he knew what I had said, even though he had changed the wording because what I said didn’t fit into the category of the insult that he wanted to make it out to be. But he knew that the Chinese would believe him and not me. When I left that evening he was outside waiting for me with a shovel in hand and in stance to bash my brains out if I dare go out the door. Luckily a friend was at the gym that day too and he was able to intervene by explaining to the man and the gym management that this was a cultural misunderstanding. After several days of dialogue with the management of the gym and by heeding their suggestion to stay away from the gym for a few days, things finally settled down and he just glared at me whenever he saw me. All in all he had lost face and was fighting to regain it.

Some twenty years ago, when I had learned a new phrase I unwittingly made another linguistic faux pas. The newly learned expression was “The dog is chasing the rat. ” Still to this day, this expression is humorous in my mind. Instead of Tom and Jerry it becomes Goofy and Jerry; the dog is doing the cat’s job. To the Chinese, however, this is like saying “Mind your own business!” in a quite rude and crass way.

The first time I innocently used this expression; I was immediately rebuked and put into the position of an adult who has neither basic social skills nor social insight. The person I said it to couldn’t seem to figure out that I was a foreigner speaking broken Chinese and maybe I didn’t realize what I was inferring. To say the least, I learned quickly that this is not an expression one uses lightly in China. Of course even small children in China know not to use this expression.

Culturally, China is, as many of us may find hard to believe, not in harmony with nature. Most people will probably think about the impressions artwork has given us about Chinese culture; the harmony with birds, rivers, mountains and streams and the wise old man with long white beard sitting and contemplating nature. That’s fine, but it’s not like that at all. We just think that is how it is from our own biased cultural viewpoint.

The Chinese have become very segregated from nature and almost view nature as a weakness and something to be conquered. I believe much of this comes from the basic Chinese cultural make-up, Confucius and Taoism, and also from recent propaganda coming out of the fifties and sixties. Maybe you’ve had the opportunity to see some of these propaganda posters that came out of the Cultural Revolution; four square-shouldered heroes in army green garb, arms strongly locked, fierce expressions of determination and success on their faces while standing in the middle of a huge flooding river. Why? They are there to stop the water! I don’t know how the average person thought about all the water that would go through their legs but I know I’ve stood in a rushing river only waist deep and the water kept going right by me not paying me any heed and I had to work hard to not be washed away.

It’s hard to say if anyone has any idea as to where dogs got such a bad rap in Chinese culture, but the fact remains, they did. This linguistic negativity must affect the way dogs are viewed and treated in Chinese culture. In the mind of the average Chinese citizen, dogs are stupid; they cannot understand anything and have no feelings. They cannot be trained and definitely cannot understand simple language and emotions. In the past, dogs have not been more to them than a lowly servant, something to scare bad people away or protect ones property. Dogs are frequently chained up in factories to “watch”, they are cajoled and teased by workers and fed leftovers from the canteen, including the paper trash and chopsticks that end up in their bowls. They track around in their own urine and feces and watch as people walk by fearful that they will just jump up and bite them for no reason. If the dog does something that doesn’t click with the humanoid, which only reinforces the feeling that they are dumb, the first response is to hit the dog and break its spirit.

Only recently over the past few years, more and more people are keeping dogs. For the more lucky dogs that are able to live in homes it will, 99% of the time, only be a purebred. If the dog is not a purebred it doesn’t have status and therefore it is of no value to have as a pet and would be put in the class of a worthless “beast”. Today in China, dogs are becoming more popular for the basic reason that it makes the owner look more wealthy and prosperous. They can not only afford to feed themselves they can even feed a dog! This dog is a “show dog”; he is shown to others. However, they don’t consider the dog to be an integral part of their family, it is just a “toy” to be played with and put away when they are finished.

One spring day, when I was walking down the street outside my Chinese apartment I noticed something on the ground in a dry-grassy area along the sidewalk. These areas are popular areas to throw trash and even relieve ones self as life walks by on the sidewalk. As I got closer, I realized it was a puppy. The puppy was lying on the ground with a plastic bag fit snuggly on its head and taped securely around its neck. The sight made me sick to my stomach as I continued walking by in shock. Someone had most likely decided that the puppy was too much trouble and they just suffocated it to get it out of the way. After reciting this incident to an American colleague of mine it was so vivid to him that a few years later he told the story back to me as if it was his own experience!

Dogs have always been a controversy in China; one main consensus is that dogs are carriers of rabies, which just for the record is called “mad-dog-disease” in Chinese. However with the rampant rat problem in China I have never heard any mention of the fact that rats carry rabies because in their minds rats may not have a disease that belongs to dogs, there is a direct linguistic correlation to rabies and dogs with no connection to rats. Too bad they didn’t call it “mad-rat-disease”, China may well have a much smaller rat problem! But if one were to coin the new name for rabies in Chinese as “mad-rat-disease” the average person would most likely find it amusing and not take it seriously.

Of course, not everyone in China has negative feelings toward dogs. I remember meeting a girl from Beijing back in the early 90s who shared the story of the fate of her dogs with me. Her family had several dogs and she seemed sincerely concerned, she retold the story of a political culling of dogs in Beijing where hers were also a part. She recounted to me how the policeman who came to rid society of the menace, picked up her smallest dog and just threw it up in the air as far as possible in the yard of their home. The rest is meaningless. I will never forget this story simply from the strong imagery that it created in my mind.

I have heard countless stories of dog owners who are forced by the Public Security officers to beat their own dogs to death as a sentence for having a dog that is not within the approved size-range of the government. Today, the acceptable size for a family pet is 35 centimeters (approximately 14 inches) high. There is no concept of lethal injections or humane deaths for animals in China, they would make the death process as miserable as possible for the owners, most likely purposefully to break their spirits, whereby teaching them a lesson.

Only recently, a woman described a story to me of a visit she made to relatives in a nearby province. She herself has an elderly Dachshund that follows her everywhere and the woman is very caring for her dog. She told me about a beautiful Husky that lived with a man up on a hill near her relative’s home. She said that one day the man who owned the dog got angry at the dog for some reason and took a long hard object to it. He beat the dog until one ear was only hanging on by skin. When she saw this situation she was appalled and in shock for the dog. She took the dog to a vet and tried to help it the best she could and she was contented to know that she had done what she could. She told me that the dog did later recover and it would visit her while she was still there. However, the problem at hand was not dealt with, the disregard for life.

This is the biggest problem today in China; there is a lack of regard for life, human or otherwise, outside one’s own immediate circle of close family and friends. This regard that is found in the tight-knit circles is not one of true compassion and love but rather more of a sense of selfish dependency; many parents rear children with hopes that they will someday repay them with a comfortable life to grow old in. The concern of what is right for the child is overpowered by the need for social recognition and “face” for the parents and the family. This is their age-old tradition; it is one of mutual benefit. In this society dogs and other lesser creatures are at the mercy of the people around them who are only looking out for themselves, it is going to take many years and possibly generations before any positive headway will truly be visible in the hearts of the people.

In China, until there is a value for the life of other humans there will not be a value for life in its more basic levels, including the lesser creatures of the earth. China has made great strides in technology but they are waning in the areas of the heart.