The Dogs of Beijing — scribbler at large

Hi everyone! This week, Beijingers are celebrating China’s National Day, so traffic in the city is light and the wet market is busy. We took advantage of the holiday with a trip to Chengde—a city northeast of Beijing—which was an eye-opening excursion that I’ll tell you about later. For now, what I’d really like to talk about are dogs.

What I didn’t mention in my last post is that, in addition to the big cultural differences between the U.S. and Beijing, the dogs here are fascinating, too. Typically, I’m more of a cat (or no pets at all, frankly) person—remnants of my early childhood dog-terror still hanging on through adulthood. You’d probably never catch me cooing over/petting a dog on the street in the U.S. unless there was social pressure to do so. But here! Here I can’t stop watching dogs and taking creep-photos of them.

Why? A few things to know first: there are size limits on dogs inside Beijing, so most of the dogs in our neighborhood are petite. In itself a hilarious fact (small dogs are the funniest). Also, leashes are optional, it seems, and about 70% of the dogs I’ve seen are leash-free. This is where the fascination starts. Imagine if the dog owners of Boston stopped using leashes. The dogs would go nuts, right? So many hyper interactions between dogs and strangers. Sheer canine madness.

Not here. They may have freedom, but Beijing dogs don’t care to exercise it. There’s no aggressive sniffing, chasing, or barking. No running away from owners—no running in general, actually. The dogs here are never frantic or fidgety. Instead, they walk like senior citizens, slow and noncommittal, looking dusty and world-weary—usually trailing behind a bored-looking owner. This was particularly noticeable in the hot, hot, HOT-and-humid summer, when they seemed to move only if absolutely necessary. Now things are cooler, and I’ve seen a couple dogs break into a halfhearted trot—but never on their way to check out a strange person or dog. More like when their owner calls them or there's food to be had.

Once I walked up behind two dogs who were checking out some garbage. One of them saw me, waddled over at a glacial speed and sniffed my shin. He looked up at me, lifting his head like it weighed thirty pounds, and then looked back at the ground. That was it. I don’t even know if he realized I was a person.

in a perpetually action-packed city, Beijing dogs are over it.

The big question is why?

I don’t have the answer (sorry, feel free to stop reading here), which is why I’m still obsessed with watching dogs—observation will reveal all! Maybe the sensory overload of Beijing has desensitized them. Or maybe the volume of people they’ve seen in their lives has destroyed any novelty humans and other pets ever had for them.

It may also be that they’ve adopted the social culture of their owners—this is not a city where strangers talk to each other unprompted, or where people make eye contact with the driver in the car next to them. Not because people are actively trying to avoid each other, but because there’s no real interest. In my limited experience, people here are neither hostile towards nor invested in passersby—they are just about their own business. Maybe the dogs have absorbed all of that and now resemble their owners.

It's amazing to me, if predictably so, that the behavior of Chinese and American pets is so different, even while breeds and general lifestyles are the same. I realize the idiocy of that comment (similar to "hey, isn't it insane that people on the other side of the world use chopsticks instead of forks?!") but this is the kind of life-detail I'd never think about if I weren't confronted by it in real life. In any case, I hope these photos at least partially capture the crushing spiritual weight these canines are lugging around with them.

Oddly enough, the few cats I’ve encountered have been super skittish—in other words, very aware of the people around them. I snapped the photo below just as this cat was waking up. He saw me and dove into the bushes.