(Beijing) Nick loves dogs!
Despite the ‘one dog policy’, Beijingers still have a lot of dogs. There must be at least a million small dogs in the city – maybe there are more dogs than kids. I walk by dozens every day on my way to work, and usually none of them are leashed. They just roam around while the owner walks behind. You have to be careful because they leave plenty of deposits everywhere (surprising for their size), and dog owners don’t seem to pick up after.
I hardly see any big dogs around. It could be simply the popularity of smaller breeds, but my fellow intern tells me that the one dog policy also stipulates a maximum size. I did see one large Dalmatian roaming around the inside of a hutong compound, as if hiding from the prying eyes of the authorities. I wonder if people’s preference for smaller breeds is because of enforcement of the size restrictions, or if there is lax enforcement due to a general preference for smaller breeds. I lean towards the latter explanation; I suspect that while enforcement is discretionary, as it is in most other cases, the local purchasing power is more suited to the upkeep of smaller breeds.
My roommate Nick, a student at the Foreign Affairs college, tells me that dogs too have a kind of hukou (residency permit). Upon registration, dogs receive an identification card with a photograph and pet name. It’s hard to imagine an ID card for Maomao the Pekingese, but this is China. Why are there so many pets? Nick says that it’s due to an empty nest syndrome, when the only child has grown up and left the household, lonely parents get a pet and often treat it like another child. It might be that in the absence of the 1CP, there might be less demand for pets.
