If you’re interested in learning more about animal histories in China check out the Chinese Animal Studies Network.
They have an excellent newsletter.
I recently read this Talking Animals Q&A with researcher Olivia Milburn.
Here’s an interesting excerpt:
To start, what first inspired you to include animals in your research?
I first started studying the role of animals in Chinese culture in 2011, due to having purely by chance encountered a story about Confucius having a pet dog.2 This is not an aspect of the life of the Sage that has really received any attention at all, but I felt it was a very humanizing detail, and it throws quite a different light on Confucius to think of him as a pet owner—in fact he’s one of the very first people in Chinese history to be recorded as having a companion animal. It is also interesting that the Liji 禮記 (Record of Ritual) does specifically stress that this was a pet, and not a guard dog or hunting dog or anything like that.
Learn more here.
John is co-author, with Midge Raymond, of the mystery Devils Island. He is also author of the novels The Tourist Trail and Where Oceans Hide Their Dead. Co-founder of Ashland Creek Press and editor of Writing for Animals (also now a writing program). More at JohnYunker.com.