I was just taking my dog out for an evening stroll just now when I was walking down the road and nearly stepped on a crab, it took me as quite a suprise when I nearly squashed the little fellow, and then I just stood there staring at him wondering how he got there. My dog Lucy didn't seem so phased, she took one glance at the little crab and then looked at me, as if she was wondering why I was stopping, which I found strange for a dog, but mind you she has been in China longer than I have so maybe she's just used to things like that.
I found it sweet that the crab had got away from wherever it was being sold, or from whoever had brought it, and escaped the fate of a very hot bath, to roam the streets of Xuzhou late at night.
It reminded me of a while ago when I was in Starbucks in the centre of town with some friends sitting down on the sofas enjoying some coffee and having a chat, when I saw something crawling along the floor right next to us. I automatically tightened up and pointed at the little creepy crawley thing (which made one of the girls we were with scream for her life) as I realised what it was, a little lobster. We were all gobsmacked for a second as we realised a little lobster had just joined us for coffee in starbucks, but then realised that it must have escaped from someone's shopping bag as they stopped in starbucks for a rest after doing some shopping.
There was also another time when I was in a supermarket and came across a fish on the floor in the middle of one of the isles, it had apparently jumped out of it's crowded stale tank and flopped itself all the way down one of the isles.
It seems all the little creatures know what fate beholds them, and try to escape their doom. But then trey must feel some kind of terror as they are piled in to small containers to get stared by humans and chucked in to bags to be carried away. It's a sure hell of a difference between their natural environment of a fresh river or the open sea. But most people don't think about how much a crab can suffer, it's just food, and you need food to live. And in China now people really want to live, and with such a rich food culture they live to eat. So the sacrifice of animal cruelty doesn't compare to being able to eat well, espically in a country where 50 years ago 30 million people stared to death over the course of three years. When you are hungry you can't think about anything else, you just want, and you do whatever you have to do to get what you want. This pretty much sums up the attitude in China now, and in all senses of the word the Chinese people are hungry, hungry for food, hungry for change, from the poor man of asia to a global superpower, hungry to get back to their former glory of the most advanced civilisation on earth. And their appetite is massive, so like the sacrifice of animal cruelty, there is also the sacrifice of the environment, as natural resources are consumed rapaciously in their desire for economic progress. But this will lead to better living standards, and with better living standards the memories of starvation will seem more distant, and then things like animal cruelty or a grey polluted sky will become more of an issue.
