The Chinese have a supremely ambivalent relationship with dogs. They still like to eat them in winter because it is good for the blood. They also consider them to be vermin and cull them on a semi-regular basis. And, recently, a growing number of newly affluent urbanites like to keep cute little puppies as pets. It means that when you see a dog, even in sophisticated Shanghai, it's not always clear whether you're looking at dinner, a rabid cur or man's best friend.
Aside from birds, turtles and fish, keeping pets has never been a Chinese tradition. Even before Mao Zedong's running dogs of imperialism vilified the species and enriched the political lexicon, China's canines were primarily hunting dogs and farm dogs not lapdogs.
Xiao Yumei works in Pet Family grooming salon in Shanghai's leafy French Concession. When the salon set up shop in 1998, she barely had enough customers to stay open. But each year more and more people began keeping pet dogs and business just kept getting better.
By 2006, it was so good a slew of competitors moved into the neighbourhood and cut into her trade, however, and it's levelled off. Xiao's customers are mostly older people with little dogs. "People in this neighbourhood live in old apartments which are not big enough for big dogs," she explains.
Many are grandparents who have spent their retirement raising their single grandchild and for a second time in their lives find themselves empty nesters. The idea of grooming a dog is new to many of Xiao clients, but they're taking to it enthusiastically.
"Our service includes showers, clipping and dye jobs," Xiao says. "Our hair dye service is basic, we can't colour a dog like a panda bear," she laughs. "Usually we just dye a dog's ears, tail or part of the body.
Pink and orange are the favourite colours." She confides, however, that one client wanted her Schnauzer clipped and primped into a Shih Tzu.
Move the scene away from Xiao's very smelly dog salon to Hanzhong city, 1,200 plus kilometres away in Shaanxi province, and no longer is the concern whether to dye your dog purple or blue; the worry is where to hide it, and, if that's not possible, how to kill it.
Claiming 300 people had been bitten by stray dogs recently and that two have died of rabies, officials slaughtered an estimated 36,000 dogs last month. Even licensed pet owners were bluntly told to kill their own pooches or pay the military $18 to do it for them.
Although dog culls were an almost annual event in China from 1949 to 1976, and there were several reports of dog roundups in Beijing prior to last year's Olympic Games, there hasn't been news of a slaughter on the scale of the Shaanxi cull in nearly three years -- and the flak has been heavy, by Chinese standards.
The central government responded by promising to publish a draft law by the end of the summer outlining its plans to protect animals, including measures prohibiting abusing and abandoning pets. It didn't mention whether killing dogs for food will be affected, but it is unlikely.
As another one of the dog measures put in place prior to last summer's Games, dog meat was banned from menus at restaurants around the capital. It wasn't much of a hardship for anyone, however, since dog stew and other canine delicacies are winter fare for the Chinese and clearly seen as too rich for the blood during a steamy Beijing summer. By the time the weather cooled, the Olympics were a memory and dog meat was back on the table.
There are no realistic figures available on how many pet dogs there are in Shanghai, let alone China. They just don't exist. Officials cite the number of licenses sold, but since most people don't buy one, it's a meaningless statistic.
In Shanghai's middle-class Luwan district, the neighbourhood committee has already experimented -- with little success -- with things like poop-and-scoop rules and a ban on dog-walking during rush hour, but it remains hopeful and is ready to try even more intrusive measures to deal with the growing number of dogs barking in the night.
The committee is now calling for a public hearing before issuing each dog license. Essentially, the five closest neighbours must agree before any applicant can legally adopt a pooch. "It is a good way to reduce conflicts caused by pet dogs," Luwan public security official Chen Mingjun optimistically told the Shanghai Daily.