Confucius Confusion.

So all my posts thus far have been pretty positive. The transition to life in China has been incredibly smooth, and I feel very blessed to have support from friends both back home and here in China to help along the way. Now for the big but.

This week I’ve read a few different articles about China on the progress the country has made in terms of business culture triumphing political motivations and the struggle to overcome a consumption economy and all that trash. I even remember reading articles back in 2007 about legally defined terms of sexual harassment and its repercussions in the workplace, a then-new concept that demonstrated modernized progression in the workplace. I’d even say China is making progressive steps every day. I’ve seen much less spitting and hardly any children using the sidewalk as their toilet (I’m not joking when I say this was a common occurrence in Shanghai). And then it all went to the wayside when I went to a “famous” tourist spot this weekend.

I went to the Confucious Temple with Cheryl and some of her friends. It was a very kind gesture to take me there as I know Nanjing natives try to stay away from those traps. As we were walking through the different alleys and marketplaces I enjoyed looking at all the different “goods” for sale: your typical Chinese trinkets. That was until we got to the “pet market.”

Being an animal lover, I was excited to see the fish and birds, but as we got further along the walkway my heart sank to see all kinds of animals, rabbits, cats and (worst of all for me) puppies, shoved into small cages. I wondered if the dogs that were lively enough to wag their tails for the passerby's had been properly fed, bathed, dewormed or had even walked on solid ground in the last week. Probably not. It broke my heart. Among the shocking conditions where these animals were being stored, I saw a cage of little kittens that seemed to have at least 25 all lying on top of each other. In all honesty, I didn’t know if they were alive. It was gut-wrenching and appalling.

And I couldn’t really say what I really felt for fear of offending my new friends who were kind enough to take me on a little tour of the city. Cheryl could tell it bothered me. We’ve had conversations about pets and she knows that I would love a little dog for a companion (something I probably won’t be able to handle or afford for a while). A little bit later, I asked my new friends about the pet market. Even they said that everyone knows that if you want to buy a pet that is not the place to go. And as they shared this, I could see they knew these conditions were wrong and the animals weren’t being cared for properly. Or maybe that’s just what I hoped they were thinking. I couldn’t help but wonder how long those dogs, cats, bunnies, etc. will be there until the inevitable.

I don’t want to come across as naive because I know that these kinds of conditions are common even in the US. “Puppy mills” are still a problem fought with little recognition back home. Animal rights activists are often seen as bleeding heart liberals and aren’t taken that seriously. And it is just the nature of a developing nation that issues along the lines of human rights, environmental issues, business practices and even animal rights are handled one at a time. For a country where adoption is still quite common, I guess you can’t expect that animals (seen as a source of food in some areas) would be treated much better than what I saw in the “pet market.” And at least locals recognize that these animals are not healthy or in good conditions. But still, nothing is really done about it. I don’t know what, if anything, I could do to fight this problem, and I’m not going to open my apartment to 3209439043590 pets. That’s almost just as bad.

I guess I am writing this post to add a little bit of the negatives with the positives. If I wrote every entry about how happy I am and nothing bothers me, it wouldn’t give an accurate representation of life over here. And while the news on China’s economic growth (well maybe not currently... Even Chinese people know the words “global recession” and “economic crisis”) and the progress toward a more legitimate democracy is true, there’s still a long way to go. Quoting one of the articles I mentioned earlier in this post, “great leaps forward are followed by equally great retreats.” So very true.