Falling out of Favor: Pets in the Smog-covered City
[vc_row][vc_column][thb_border][vc_column_text]The takeaway
Even with the growing awareness of the hazardous smog, Chinese people seem to be helpless to escape from it, let alone their pets. Out of the world shrouded by smog comes a genuine equality between man and pets.[/vc_column_text][/thb_border][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
According to the statistics released by Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center at 9am on February 14, 2017, the average PM2.5 readings in Beijing stood at 197μg/m³, indicating heavy pollution.
This spell of smoggy weather started from February 12th. Although the air quality temporarily improved on 13th, it unexpectedly deteriorated on 14th. But whether it was the distraction of the fascinating Spring Festival, or that the pollution index reading was not shocking enough, the public’s interest in complaining and joking seemed to wane dramatically.
Maybe it was the “smog fatigue”. Hazy days has been commonplace in Beijing since the fall and winter of 2016 – even the New Year’s Eve suffered from it. And before this, words and pictures about smog spammed WeChat Moments at intervals.
Moreover, in mid-December of 2016, the continuous days of severe haze throughout the country seemed to challenge the bottom line of the public and even restarted the long-existed discussion of “Run away from Beijing Shanghai and Guangzhou”.
“I’m breathing the same polluted air”
But complaining was as far as most people would go, few people really leave Beijing. Thus, the pets have to stay with their owners and learn to live with the smog.
Post-90s girl Chen Meiya couldn’t help worrying about her cat Goudan when she found it sneezes frequently these days.
She and Goudan are new intruders in Beijing, as they just moved from Shenzhen 4 month ago.
Once rented a house and settled down in Panjiayuan, Chaoyang District, Chen Meiya immediately brought Goudan to Beijing. This shiny black cat accompanied her throughout the three-month probation period in the new company and felt all her uneasiness.
Some sort of the uneasiness was caused by the choking smog. Growing up in Guangdong Province, Chen was used to the blue sky and white clouds all year round, not the experience of being a walking smog absorber. Her throat felt burnt and she could even smell it in the air. Goudan was even more sensitive. As long as the air purifier was on, it would lay on the floor next to the air outlet, yet it still doesn’t help with the sneezing.
Chen was distressed to see that.
While worrying about whether she could pass the probationary period and whether she would be abandoned by the city full of dreams, the girl also acted like a protector and tried to provide Goudan with comfortable living environment as she could. After all, the cat was a comfort to her. She even wrote an article for it titled “It was Lucky to Have a Cat in Such a Big City”.
Chen searched for all kinds of air-filtration masks for cats on Taobao.com, but found none of them reliable. As a result, she had to clean Goudan’s body by wet tissue and carefully scrub dirt off its eyes and nose every day. She always kept an eye on the indicator light of the air purifier. She felt safe when the blue light representing good air quality was on, and became frustrated when it turned to red.
In a WeChat Group of cat owners, Chen turned to her friend Su Ma for help. He came to Beijing with his cat at almost the same time as Chen, and also lived in Chaoyang District. But the man she defined as smarter and more resourceful told her: “I’m breathing in the same polluted air.”
When Chen saw someone recommending a foreign and more effective type of air-filtration mask on the Internet, although its price was several times more than the ordinary ones, she immediately bought eight masks of that type and distributed them to her friends who were also newcomers to Beijing. Like tens of thousands more young people packing into Beijing every year, they brought themselves and their pets, living in cramped communities of drifters like Tongzhou, Tiantongyuan and Huilongguan. The tension caused by the polluted air and work mixed together, acting upon each other, hence adding more uncertainty to their turbulent life. Sometimes, it was hard to tell which sort of anxiety aggravated another.
“Why would you come here to suffer?”
Unlike Chen Meiya, Yelaoduo is a native Beijinger, and he has no difficulty fitting in. However, he got tracheitis not long ago which estranged him from the city. On February 13th, as the sky over his neighborhood in Haidian District unexpectedly cleared up, Ye rushed to take Meishier, his husky, out and walked it for an hour. Meishier was so excited that it sprang at every dog it met and played with them. These dogs were also out to enjoy the sunshine. Ye strangled the impulse to cough, and let Meishier play as long as it wanted.
Ye’s mother was supposed to go out with them, but she had a persistent cough since the winter of 2016. Ye felt so sorry for her. He once heard about the “Smog-caused Depression” on the news and believed that the widespread gloom was somehow the consequences of the bad weather. Hence, he began to hate to city that he used to like since childhood. When he met a newcomer in Beijing, he would occasionally ask them: “Why would you come here to suffer?”
Being a famous micro-blogger with about 100,000 followers, Ye posted a blog: “Our WeChat Moment is filled with grumbles about the smog, but what we want is actually quite simple: we just want to wake up to see the blue sky outside the windows and stretch ourselves, rather than put on a frowning face after checking the air quality and say the f-word through gritted teeth; we just want to go out for a run in the morning and have a picnic with our family on the weekend, rather than take our kids to the hospital every day or see the our elderly parents stuck indoors and cough badly. What do you want to say about this? I really want to hear it.”
More than 200 comments with both words and pictures flooded in. Followers from Tianjin, Shijiazhuang and Chengdu took turns to make fun of their own cities which they referred to as “a fairyland where people lose their sight entirely” or “the smoggiest city in the world”.
Ye was not in the mood to join them, and he felt that something must be done to light up the gloomy mood.
Meishier was so energetic that it couldn’t stand staying indoors for more than a day or two. Ye felt like he should create some “positive energy” both for Meishier and himself. He asked one of his friends who runs a gym for help and took Meishier to run on the treadmill there during the smoggy days, releasing its excessive energy. They went to the gym twice a day at 6am and 10pm when there was no customers.
Meishier kept running on the treadmill for half an hour with its eyes looking straight ahead. Ye was watching it all the time, and deep down he knew that Meishier didn’t like this monotonous and boring machine.
But this was best Ye could do for Meishier.
On this Valentine’s Day, as the gym was closed for these days, Ye had to find another way to play with Meishier. So he got a piece of meat, fixed it on a stick, and hold it while walking around the house. When Meishier needed to urinate or defecate, Ye would quickly take it out and come back home within 10 minutes.
The Post-85s man was strict to himself as well as his pet on health issues. When air quality is poor, Ye will wear a mask, but Meishier didn’t like masks. Indeed, no matter what was put on its face, it kept on shaking its head until it drags the thing off. For the dog’s health, Ye couldn’t bath it every day. Instead, he cleaned its body with a mid-wet towel regularly.
These days, Ye’s followers on Weibo sent him dozens of more messages than usual, and most of them were consulting the same thing: how to protect dogs from the hazardous smog? Meanwhile, there were similar discussions on some pet websites and online communities like Zhihu. All sorts of anti-smog strategies were circulating among pet owners. On Taobao.com, a self-claimed imported dog mask from America was priced ￥197.
In order to find the answer to this question, Ye consulted his veterinarian friend Lao Yin, who told him not to take pets out in extreme weather.
In December of 2016, on the day after another heavy haze hit Beijing, Ye promptly drove a jeep to Chengde, along with his girlfriend and his dog Meishier, for a temporary relief from the toxic air.
Headed to the north all the way, Ye got more and more refreshed. The song “What’s Your Name” was played in the car—-” Don not stay there in a trance but to cheer up. Upsets and worries will get away with me.” They were humming the song together with no idea whether it was because of the good weather that has disappeared for a long time or it was due to the sound from Little Tiger that took them to the carefree childhood. Meishier also lied on the backseat comfortably, showing its affection to Ye at times.
At that moment, Ye felt the happiness that had been long absent. He recalled Beijing at his young age, where the sky was blue, and when two people met in a Hutong, one of neighbors would say: Let’s go to my place and have a meal and another one would say: Alright, let’s go. Such kind of pleasant and ease are rarer nowadays.
“What else could be done?”
During the 8 years since Tang Bin moved from Jiangsu to Beijing, Tang had Daoba’s company on every important occasion. At the time when he got divorced, his daughter’s custody was assigned to his wife. Before his daughter entered university, his visit time was limited to 1 to 2 days every time he visits her. Serious loneliness trapped this middle-aged man.
He regarded Daoba as his son. On every Daoba’s birthday, he would hold a party for it, ordering big cake and calling up other pet owners to celebrate.
On festivals, he would buy expensive steaks for Daoba. The vendor was confused that steak was consumed so quickly in his family. Dog foods he bought to Daoba were all imported and one dog necklace was worth several thousand RMB. When Daoba was young, it was a star dog and participated in games at home and abroad, showed on CCTV and met some stars. Someone once offered 1 million RMB to buy Daoba but Tang Bing refused without a second thought since which father would sell his son.
Tang was a modest and polite man. There were times when he seemed to be happy and optimistic while he actually felt lonely. He moved from urban district to Tongzhou to get away from complicated interpersonal relationships. On the other hand, he felt totally relieved with Daoba’s company. When he had bad days, he sat on the sofa without a word. Daoba would perceive his bad mood and run over to lick him and bump him with his snout.
He spent much money and energy on Daoba, but when confronting the smog, he seemed to be helpless. He displayed a bitter smile and said:” I am a careless man and this is the way I live. What else could be done?”
The loneliness lasting for years made Tang insensible to his surroundings in which the weather is included as well. This insensibility is mixed with accustomed stolidity and a little bit indifference.
“The pain is forgotten when the scar cicatrized”
Zhao Tianxu is the technological dean of the Chong Fu Xin International Animal Medical Center. In his view, this insensibility of Tang is not unusual. Zhao Tianxu receives many patients every day. At 4 p.m. on February 14, the average of PM2.5 in Beijing reached 260. He found that few pet owners in medical center talked about the weather and everyone was busy treating their pet’s for specific disease. However, in one month ago some people once asked him about how to protect pets from the smog.
As a pet doctor, Zhao Tianxu has been paying much attention to the link between pets and the smog. This winter, he received dozens of pets suffering coughs but there was no evidence to reveal it was directly related to the smog. The only thing he could do was listing the comparison data to explain the harm from smog: every time the tidal volume (the exchange of air volume in steady breath process) a person takes in is around 5-10ml/kg but dogs and cats would take in more, and the figure is nearly 10-15ml/kg. Theoretically, animals do get harm from smog, but the extent is not scientifically verified.
A madam turning to Zhao Tianxu with her pet said that people were complaining the smog in WeChat Moments before but several days later they were excited because of a modest sunglow and it seemed like the old saying that “the pain is forgotten when the scar cicatrized”.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_raw_html]JTNDYSUyMGhyZWYlM0QlMjJodHRwcyUzQSUyRiUyRnR3aXR0ZXIuY29tJTJGc2hhcmUlMjIlMjBjbGFzcyUzRCUyMnR3aXR0ZXItc2hhcmUtYnV0dG9uJTIyJTIwZGF0YS1zaG93LWNvdW50JTNEJTIyZmFsc2UlMjIlM0VUd2VldCUzQyUyRmElM0UlM0NzY3JpcHQlMjBhc3luYyUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMiUyRiUyRnBsYXRmb3JtLnR3aXR0ZXIuY29tJTJGd2lkZ2V0cy5qcyUyMiUyMGNoYXJzZXQlM0QlMjJ1dGYtOCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRnNjcmlwdCUzRQ==[/vc_raw_html][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_cta h2=”” h4=”Credits:”]Translation: 虫洞翻翻
Source: 博客天下
Original article: 失“宠”：雾霾之下的宠物们
Featured image: CFP[/vc_cta][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_cta h2=”” h4=”Related articles:”]
Under the Dome: The smog film taking China by storm – BBC
China smog: millions start new year shrouded by health alerts and travel chaos – The Guardian
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