A Capital Canine: The Aristocratic Background of the Pekinese

Editor's Note: We're celebrating tbj's ten-year anniversary all month by looking back at some of our favorite articles from the past decade. Forgotten City, which ran in the magazine from 2004-2008, was written by sinologist and history buff Ed Lanfranco, a California native who lived in Beijing from 1989-2009 and now resides back in his home state where he is researching Chinese food safety and security issues.

What better time than July’s dog days of summer in the Year of the Dog, when libations in excess send seasoned tipplers scrambling for their favorite “hair of the dog” remedy, to howl about the capital’s eponymous pooch, the Pekinese?

I have an abiding love of dogs, whether they’re on a leash or a plate. Good dog has a spicy garlic flavor while bad dog tastes like a mutt’s breath: it’s a matter of culinary skill. Good dogs are affectionate, loyal and loving companions while bad dogs yap, snap, crap on the carpet and try to hump a visitor’s leg, their behavior a reflection of their owner’s intelligence.

Even in nasty summer, when the pollution, construction and traffic make this place seem like it’s going to the dogs, some of Beijing’s indigenous things serve as reminders of its faded regal heritage, a charming grace able to soften at least one cynical heart; for instance, this shot of me (above) with Baobao and Beibei, two Pekinese I met in a hutong (now gone) who briefly seduced me. Their owner, a courtly gentleman in his mid 60s lived near a dog-leg corner of two sharp turns in an alleyway maze not far from the Forbidden City. Twin Pekes (“Peke” being the shortened nickname among breed devotees) pranced out of their doorway giving me and the photographer a wary, yet friendly sniff. I secured their master’s permission in Mandarin. They were the nicest bitches I’ve ever picked up in Beijing.
China’s canine culture is part of humankind’s common anthropological heritage of dog domestication. The historical record of this animal features prominently as a food source and other recorded uses going back to the Han dynasty, straddling the appearance of Christ, two centuries before and after his presence. Han tomb raiders have found dog meat buried along with multiple other sources of animal protein, grain and legume carbohydrates, vegetables, fruits and spices for repasts intended for the afterlife. Archaeologists disturbing the dead have also uncovered funerary objects of small canines carved from common and precious stone plus glazed pottery figurines.

Scholars believe miniature dogs served a niche amusing the elite of ancient times, with the little beast’s position growing in prominence with the introduction of Buddhism from India almost two millennia ago. Tigers are indigenous to China, but the lion, an icon of conveyance for Buddha and protector of the faith’s important buildings, is not. As an art motif, the Chinese lion is portrayed with stylized canine features including a short, thick body, bulging eyes, wide mouth and curled mane. The Pekinese breed shares most of those characteristics and was deemed semi-divine, linked with the legendary Fu Dog that drove demons away. Africa and China have in common legends about a lioness mating with a butterfly. In the Middle Kingdom version, the resulting offspring was a dog called the “butterfly lion.” Besides “xiao shizi gou” or little lion dog, the breed has several other names, with Emperor Qianlong credited with first calling it “Beijing gou.”

The Manchus ruling China were serious dog lovers and placed great importance on the similarities between Peking’s palace pooches and the Buddhist lion. Commoners were forced to bow in the presence of the breed and the penalty for dog theft was death. The Empress Dowager Cixi kept dozens of them.

The term Pekinese was originally the Anglicized noun for the people of Beijing with a lower case “p” used for the famed dog. It entered mainstream English in the 1860s during the last 50 years of the Qing dynasty, a tragic era that first introduced the breed to the West during a time of imperialist rapine incursions.

When British and French troops sacked and torched the Yuanmingyuan in 1860 as retribution for the killing of envoys seeking parley under a white flag of truce (an alien concept to Manchu warriors), part of the plunder making its way to England were five dogs, with one given to Queen Victoria. She named it “Lootie” (or Looty).

The prized pet of China’s elite took on the same status in the UK and US. It has been celebrated in a Cole Porter tune and the novels of P.G. Wodehouse. Nowadays you can find Peke freaks around the world, from Lithuania to Brazil and all points in between.