(LI SHIGONG)

It is well known that China is home to nearly 1.4 billion people; but there's another population within its borders that, for the past 40 years, has been rising steadily right along with it: the pet populace.

The number of dogs is nearly 60 million and counting. Although a ban on their ownership was in place just a few decades ago, when they were seen as a mark of excess during times of national hardship, China's economic success has created a more suitable environment for the companionship of animals, particularly among the growing number of empty nesters.

On a cold winter morning in Beijing recently I saw an elderly pet owner walking her pug on a leash. It was dressed in a Christmas sweater with a small toy backpack, as if on the way to its first day of dog training school.

Most dogs in China are similar in size to the overdressed pug, if not similarly fashioned. Regulations in some cities once required that pet dogs in city center be no more than 35 cm in height—leaving little room for greyhounds, golden retrievers, or great Danes. But as is often the case, many people ignored the rule and bought bigger breeds, taking their Saint Bernards out for nightly walks under cover of darkness to avoid getting caught and fined.

But as I learned one afternoon, China's plenitude of pets extends far beyond the canine variety.

After dashing into a building to momentarily escape the cold weather, my senses quickly detected that it was no ordinary shopping mall. Rather than expensive perfume, it smelled like wood chips and chemicals; instead of generic pop punk music, a cacophony of barking and chirping resonated within.

I moved further inside and walked downstairs, entering an underground maze of stalls familiar to veteran shoppers in China. But instead of Hello Kitty T-shirts at a bargain, there were kittens crammed into cages stacked one on top of another; no pirated DVDs, but endless tanks filled with the clownfish made famous in the movie Finding Nemo; and though the place lacked the sort of mystery meat offered up at Chinese barbecue, it had plenty of bizarre unidentified creatures likely banned from pet stores in my home country.

One furry bug-eyed rodent crawled up the sleeve of a shop owner and took a flying leap off his shoulder onto a cage, awing its potential future owners before climbing back into the sanctity of his makeshift home. In another stall, a lively marsupial with a long, curled tail bounded up a vertical obstacle course. And in the narrow hallways, song birds hopped about in bamboo cages hung from the ceiling.

While browsing through one of the many stores selling aquariums, I made an impulse purchase of a small fish tank filled with plants and soil. What I hadn't yet stopped to consider was which of the thousands of fish in the pet mall to buy.

One breed of fish stood out among the others, present in nearly every store in the giant complex—bright orange in color, with a bulbous growth atop its head as if its brain were too big for its body, swam accompanied by dozens of relatives in an aquarium. In other tanks, jellyfish floated transparently and limply, some of which were glowing in neon colors.

I finally decided on buying a handful of tiny tropical fish with a streak of blue and red running horizontally along their bodies. A Chinese employee told me in his limited English what species they were—baoliandeng (lotus lantern), named after a mythological story of a goddess who is imprisoned under a mountain for marrying a mere mortal, and is later rescued by her half-blood son.

The shop owner did his best to give me a list of things to do to ensure that my fish wouldn't die (only fill the tank with Wahaha brand spring water, he said in Chinese, as I wondered what was so funny about the serious topic of pet safety) as well as things to avoid so as not to kill them (the soil in my tank, for instance, contained a pH level likely to contaminate the water). I asked for eight fish—a lucky number in China—which by the time I arrived home had mysteriously fallen to five, with the missing three being possible sacrifices to the sea goddess. In any case, my five remaining fish are now thriving in their heated tank, christened Monday through Friday, respectively.

The author is an American living in Beijing

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