Only In China #3

I was scouring the internet for an original source to the article posted below, but couldn’t find it. I found a few supposed links to a CNN piece published on July 4, 2007 describing the same event, but only encountered “page not found” dead-ends. However, I did not leave my investigation empty-handed. In what sense? First read the post, then find out.

BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- A Chinese man bit to death a fierce dog that was savaging his beloved puppy.

Awakened by the puppy’s yelps, a villager named Geng first tried to chase the dog away by hurling watermelons at it, a local newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The farmer then threw himself on the dog, clamping his teeth around its neck and eventually killing it.

“The two were rolling around on the ground and fighting for nearly 10 minutes,” the Yanzhao Cosmopolitan News in the northern province of Hebei said.

Geng suffered deep cuts to his arms and was treated in hospital. The puppy survived.

In my search for an original source, I read through a few forums in which people reacted to Man Bites Dog. They made comments such as, “Dogs get killed for killing humans...what about reverse laws?” or, “It’s obvious to me that Geng wasn’t a responsible dog owner to allow his ‘beloved puppy’ to be outside. The other dog owner also wasn’t a responsible dog owner for letting his dog roam the streets either.” Now despite the incredible progress China has made over the course of the past three decades - ever since Deng Xiaoping’s reform policies - three quarters of a billion people still live in rural areas. That is two-and-a-half times the entire US population. But what is rural? Well, it depends on what you’re defining it for. Censuses and health programs, for example, use different definitions. But in terms of character, and especially in terms of China, it means POOR! Generally speaking, laws protecting dogs do not come before sanitation and economic development. While there is PETA activity in China, it happens in big cities such as Guangzhou…Or in Beijing, for example, when The Beijing City Government Food Safety Office reported that dog meat was off the menu during the Olympics. Moreover, many places in China don’t even have “streets” (in the Western sense of the word) for letting their dogs roam on. I would like my readers who are unfamiliar with China to know that it is in understanding this dichotomy between urban-rural, old-new, Communism-Capitalism, expressways-alleyways, (and the list goes on) that one begins to understand this country.