Kill a tiger + be more manly! =  So wrong!  

The tigers are having to enter villages to eat, because their natural areas are being taken over by human pollution. This is the case in the ever expanding Indian population. The Indian Goddess Kali (who rides on a tiger), would not be very happy, with all these people killing the tigers.


I only have this one life, so I am going to try my very best to make a positive change. --- The Happy & Healthy Vegan ---

or watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj3NeI_oejA

Please check out the websites of some of the following groups, and contribute if you can:
www.worldwildlife.org/tigers/
www.eia-international.org/campaigns/species/tigers
www.traffic.org/trade

And so little is being done to pressure the Chinese -- which is an insanity of another kind.

Thanks for your good observations, JavaEarth.  I did not know that about Kali -- a "bitch who gets things done" if there ever was one -- ; but so far, even she seems to be giving up on her tigers.

And thanks, Ross, for those references.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

   There is little evidence that the Chinese government is going to legalize the trade.  The only people who are interested are some folks at the biggest tiger "farm" (where research and breeding takes place).  They have frozen the bodies of tigers who died of natural causes in the hopes of making some money if they can sell the parts.

   (They are a smallish operation, and perpetually short of funds).

   The best bet for the tigers is for folks who have money to provide enough to help save their habitats, and to support breeding and research centers.

   Habitat destruction is their greatest enemy, in both China and India.  It is actually amazing that they have managed to survive for so long!!  But, a little help would go a long way!!!

patrick in Beijing

Movin' people to make room for animals!  How innovative!  The rest of the planet should try it sometime.

  It is worth noting that the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA is listed as the number two destination of tiger parts.  Anyone got any ideas how to stop it?

patrick in Beijing

<<
Analogy due to real homology is explicit in another famous Zhuangzi story, the happiness of fish.  Standing on a bridge with his skeptical debate partner Huizi, Zhuangzi [earlier often transliterated "Chuang-tzu"] praises the free and easy action of the minnows.  Huizi asks: "You are not a fish.  Whence do you know that the fish are happy?"  Zhuangzi replies that: "You aren't me, whence do you know that I don't know the fish are happy?" and adds that "you asked me the question already knowing that I knew."  Zhuangzi is saying that one intuitively knows the pleasure of fish.  He implies that people and fish share enough basic similarity that humans can understand them.
...
This brief account has hardly touched on several other ways in which animals figure in Daoist and Daoist-influenced traditions.  One of these is the sobering case of the use of animals in traditional Chinese medicine, which stands in utter contrast to these Han and Six dynasty accounts of human-animal moral reciprocity.  Animals are the objects or means of cure in a variety of medical texts.  Animals, both living and dead, appear as elements in the treatment of disease.  In some cases, live animals are used in ritual cures; in others, medications made from animal products are used as treatments. ... The use of animals in medicine is also of the greatest practical importance, since the (often illegal) killing of animals for medical products is a major factor in the depletion of many endangered animal species today.  This problematic relation to animals dates from our earliest records of medical practice. ... The use of animal products in traditional Chinese medicine continues to the present day.
>>

As for the WWF's tiger experts, from Nepal and India, I strongly doubt that they would travel to an important international meeting in Stockholm with data that was out-of-date or otherwise refutable.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

   The trade in Tiger parts is illegal, everywhere.  But nothing is happening.  Yelling at governments to stop smuggling has worked really well in the US, hasn't it?? (That's why heroin and cocaine are unavailable).  

   If anyone REALLY wants to save Tigers in the wild, stopping the smuggling is useless.  Stopping the poaching is the only thing that is likely to work.  (Notice that India, despite some efforts, has lost 60% of its Tiger population in the last six years).

   Here's how to save the Tigers.  For probably $100 million a year (a pittance, less than the cost of a jet), a wealthy nation could pay all the people in areas close to Tigers to protect them, and fight poachers.

   This worked for quite a while in Africa, until desperation and wars began to drive more poachers towards the animals.  There is no reason to think that it wouldn't work in the places in Asia that have wild Tigers.

   If you want to protect indigenous animals, you first need to get the indigenous peoples to do it.  They need money and education.  My mama always told me to put my money where my mouth is.

   If folks really want to save the Tigers.

patrick in Beijing

Probably our sometime correspondent from South Africa is right to criticize the conservationist BINGOs, for either corruption on the part of the upper tiers, or obtuseness in designing projects.

On US consumption of tiger body parts: Yes, that is a fascinating, disturbing item in the WWF experts' report.  And you are right to draw an analogy with the unstoppable demand for illegal drugs in this country.

Of course, the sale and possession of such drugs as marijuana and cocaine and their derivatives should simply be decriminalized.  Opium and heroin are more dangerous substances, but they too should not be treated in the criminal code as they are.  And it is a huge gap of laziness amongst our citizens, that we never question critically the quite hollow justification for criminalizing these substances.

Trafficking in endangered wild animals and their body parts, however, is another matter entirely.  In that case, a true crime is being committed, regardless of how the laws of any land may classify it.

I wish it were more clear what the WWF experts were talking about, when they referred to the US market.  There are three principal kinds of products questionably derived from endangered wild animals:

1. live wild animals.  I believe it is true that there are more live tigers in the US -- privately owned, and usually illegally so, given local restrictions -- than in India.  Yet another instance of good ol' native American cluelessness!

2. body parts that become works of art (e.g. made of ivory), or decorations (e.g. hides of bears, or big cats, or horns and hooves of hoofed animals), or parts of clothing or clothing accessories (e.g. hides again, as well as teeth and claws).

3. body parts to be used in traditional Chinese medicine.

With the naivete' of a scholarly flake, I would like to think that the practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine could be made to understand that the ancient Daoist and Confucianist classics refer to much happier and more respectful expressions of appreciation of wild animals.  And therefore, when conservationists -- who may happen to be Western -- ask them to relinquish their practises insofar as they affect wild animals, we are not at all asking them to do something foreign and Western and colonialist-pleasing, but are indeed recalling them to their own native ancient wisdom.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

        I have had a number of students who were studying TCM.  One of my good friends is the Director of TCM at a major hospital.  NONE of them use animal parts from endangered species.  A couple of them are vegetarians and use NO animal parts.

        There has been a lot of research going on as to how to substitute chemicals of other substances for animal parts (you may forgive people (or not) if they concentrate on replacements for endangered animal parts first).

        That said, there are naturally, some reactionary elements who oppose these changes.  But it is NOT true that they are the majority of TCM practitioners.

        I can't blame you for not knowing this, the MSM is so terrible in America that it is a miracle if Americans have any knowledge about the world, too bad much of it is wrong.

        As to Daoism, that situation is also much more complicated than silly stereotypes suggest.  Sigh.  I have friends who are studying and working to develop a modern Daoism that keeps what they believe to be its essence, while embracing many modern thoughts and ideas.

        It is really sad that Americans so readily swallow any absurdity about China.  It is a much more complicated place than the MSM would allow.

        In the meantime, I do wish folks would save the Tigers if possible. (Did you know that a Chinese woman has started an NGO which is shipping Tigers to Africa, looking for a place where there might be space for them to fit in and survive in the wild?  Crazy?  I dunno, but she cares and has some South African partners.).

patrick in Beijing

thanks for reporting some hopeful movement toward vegetarian traditional Chinese medicine.  I look forward to hearing more positive news about that, and especially about good results regarding conservation.

More generally, I urge you as a friend to cease accusing us in the US of always spouting off irresponsibly about Chinese matters on the basis of incomplete information.  Sometimes we do indeed do that; and there is indeed a great danger that that obstructs the cause of friendship between Americans and Chinese, which is to be sure a cause of terrific importance, for moral reasons at least as much as practical political and economic ones.

But I for one have always acknowledged the limits of my knowledge regarding China, its government and its people.  And so have most writers in Gristmill, I think.

By the same token, I am not prepared to discount the glimpses into China prepared by journalists working for major news companies.  Of course, we do need to receive the reports from the Mainstream Media with some critical questioning, but certainly NOT with paranoia.  Nor should we too easily assume that our fellow Americans who hear the same news reports that we do are being stupidly propagandized into a simplistic anti-China attitude by those reports.

As for those two scholars specializing in Daoism whom I quoted earlier, they are professionals who know Chinese very well, and are in constant contact with both scholars and other intelligent, observant people in China.  When they report, in a most understated way, that the practice of traditional Chinese medicine is a serious conservation problem, it is unreasonable to discount their words.

On the other hand, I do not remember your ever admitting your own limitations regarding Chinese matters.  Yes, you are in China, and yes, you have a particular Beijing-centered perspective, and yes, you know many Chinese people, and how they live.  But that hardly makes you an expert on all things Chinese, does it.  There is no reason for us to believe that your own sources of information are exhaustive and definitive, any more than I could be counted on to comment on, say, to pick a pair of Grist-related subjects, the patterns of consumption or of preferred transportation use of my neighbors here on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, still less on what the hell they are doing in Maine or Mississippi or Minnesota.

Please show some humility.  And please acknowledge that we in this country are not totally blind and stupid and unfair.  I ask you those things as a friend.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

        Thank you for being open and honest regarding your feelings.

        I am sorry if I appear arrogant to you.  But I am not sure what "humility" you want me to display?

        My on-going criticism and problem with postings on the subject of China on Grist (and in the MSM) is that 1)  They are unbalanced.  2)  Many of the criticisms are more along the line of attacks than anything I would call constructive.

        Do you wish to discuss this as an issue?  I would be glad to.  When I suggest this (and I have many times), I generally get no reply.  (Except anger, and complaints that I am too pro-China, or an agent of the Chinese government, or even a Chinese citizen pretending to be an American to spread propaganda).

        That aside, my issues are that

        1)  Most reporting is unbalanced.  Do you wish to argue otherwise?  Please (and anyone else should feel free to do so) respond if you care to.

        2)  Most comments (not ALL!!!) go along the lines of "China is terrible, they are terrible, we think they are terrible."  Very few people offer anything that anyone would regard as constructive criticism.  If you disagree with this, we can discuss it as well.

pace,

patrick in Beijing

        You write "I do not remember your ever admitting your own limitations regarding Chinese matters.  Yes, you are in China, and yes, you have a particular Beijing-centered perspective, and yes, you know many Chinese people, and how they live.  But that hardly makes you an expert on all things Chinese, does it.  There is no reason for us to believe that your own sources of information are exhaustive and definitive, ",

         Frankly, I have never claimed that to have sources of information that are "exhaustive and definitive."

         Anyone is free to question any "fact" or "opinion" I post, and many people do so.  I have admitted to be wrong on many occasions, but apparently not wrong enough (smile).

         I often post links to source what I am saying, but based on follow up comments, I feel (and perhaps I am wrong) that no one ever reads them.  Sigh.

         I left Grist for a while after an attack from D.R. (yeah, I got who he was talking about).  I came back, because there are things I believe in.  What I am hearing from you, is that my beliefs (in supporting developing nations) should be tempered because Americans don't want to hear them.  That's my read, sorry.  

        (I often get this feeling when I post regarding environmental justice, race or class issues, much like the unwelcome guest at the high society dinner.)

         How sharp the tongue of friendship!!

patrick in Beijing

I think they would be quite happy in California, Louisiana and Brazil's forests. Here in the golden state we have a surplus of wild pork that could use thinning and plenty of deer. A few breeding pairs of tigers would add quite a thrill to backpacking and camping trips in the forests also.

I mean, heck, we've got every other invasive plant or animal in the world living here, why not tigers?

p.s- I would also like some elephants to take care of the overgrowth of wild grapes.

Put the Carbon Back

Yes, I remember that you left commenting in Gristmill for a while, and I for one was very sorry that that happened.  I did not know that DR had stung you, but that does not surprise me.

I am certainly not saying now that Americans do not want to hear what you have to say.  If that is your "read," I am glad to have the opportunity to put you aright.

I consider you a very valuable member of the Gristmill community, in large part because of your honest and trustworthy and always interesting eye-witness reporting on conditions in Beijing, especially regarding your students and how they live.

Also, I have no doubt that you have access to good, reliable sources of information on other subjects, which supplement in important ways the information about Chinese things which we receive in this country.

In this country, there are two, possibly three, large sources of anti-Chinese feeling, which perhaps are represented in the attitudes of some of us in the Gristmill community:

1. The political party that tends to represent US conservatives, in its most enlightened moments on anthropogenic global warming, acknowledges that it exists, but claims that it would be destructive of the US economy if the US government imposed anything by way of mitigation, without an assurance that China (and India to a lesser extent) is committed to doing at least as much.

2. Those on the left dislike all authoritarian regimes, including the Chinese government.  (Some of these, remember, also allied themselves with the Neo-Conservatives in 2003, in their condemnation of Saddam Hussein, and supported the invasion of Iraq -- much to their embarrassment subsequently.)  Among journalists, there is perhaps a sign of this in their vaguely implied mistrust of the Chinese government's preparations for the Beijing Olympics, in their vaguely implied disapproval of the Chinese government's uncritical friendship with the governments of Burma and Sudan, and in their rather more than vague impatience with the information crackdown in connexion with current protests by Tibetans.

3. Is there an element of racism, as you have implied from time to time?  Perhaps, but it strikes me as something that is very hard to detect.  By contrast, there seems to be little restraining many Americans from speaking out freely in contempt not only of the French government but also of French culture, French history and the French people: that is a perfect example of how Americans can be brutally unfair, while not being guilty of racism.

But the matter of "balance" needs to be more carefully defined.  The call for "balance" should NOT mean: "Your source of information is simply wrong, and is vitiated by a China-bashing attitude, and should be replaced by a source of information available to me here in China."  It SHOULD mean: "Your source of information is fine to a certain extent, but needs to be supplemented by other kinds of information that were not reported."

As for the rarely helpful charge of "China-bashing": It is possible that some Americans on the right consider it appropriate and desirable to maintain an attitude of constant mistrust of China.  But that is certainly not the case with Americans on the left, who generally are careful to distinguish between a country's government and its people.  And I strongly doubt that is the case with many commenters in Gristmill.

Certainly it would not be fair to accuse such journalists as the New York Times's Pulitzer-prize winning Nicholas Kristof, married to a Chinese-American woman, Sheryl Wu-Dunn, also a distinguished journalist, of "China-bashing," for covering the painful events of Spring, 1989:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of ....

And by the same token, it does not always make sense to respond to any item critical of the Chinese government or of Chinese tradition with, "Yes, perhaps China does such-and-such, but don't you see, the US does as bad and worse."  Most of us on the left are already highly vigilant regarding injustices or abuses committed by Americans, and certainly have no interest whatsoever in either ignoring them or defending the perpetrators.

You and I agree on so much: We agree that friendship and mutual respect between the Chinese and American peoples are highly to be desired; and, as teachers, we agree that education counts for a great deal, and should never be neglected.

I always enjoy what you write in Gristmill: long may you carry on!  Please know that at least one of us here considers your remarks on social justice, and on Chinese society, to be invaluable.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

True tigers are members of one or another subspecies of Panthera tigris.  Lions are members of one or another subspecies of Panthera leo.  North America used to have its own lion, now extinct, who grew to be one of the very largest of all cats.

The Americas, including a bit of the US Southwest, still have their own native member of Panthera: the jaguar (P. onca).  In many parts of their range, jaguars do not have it easy.  Whatever we may decide to do for tigers -- and, frankly, introducing tigers into North America strikes me as utterly quixotic -- , there are certainly good practical things that we could be doing for jaguars.  E.g., oppose a border fence between the US and Mexico.

We also have another large cat in the Americas, a member of the other subfamily of cats, the Felinae, and a fairly close cousin of the cheetahs, namely the puma or cougar or mountain lion (Felis concolor).  This cat is highly adaptable, and may be restoring its pre-Columbian range (save perhaps in Florida, where it is known as the Florida panther, and is being boxed in by development).  Pumas do not always behave well in encounters with people in the wild.  If LiteSong should meet one during a camping trip in the Rockies or the Sierra Nevada or the Cascades -- or even in northern New England, perhaps -- , any number of Disney songs might be autonomically set playing.

Anyway, anti-predator prejudice is already a big disgusting fact in American history and sociology.  Do we really want to subject some innocent tigers from abroad to our red-blooded all-American haters wielding guns and traps and poisoned bait?

Tasermons Partner is right to point out that there are already many tigers present in the US, in private circumstances.  I did not know that the state of Texas accounts for so many of them, but I am not at all surprised.

Texans, and others in the US West, have already in the past stocked private game preserves with Asian and African wild goats, antelope and deer.  Some of these species have escaped, and have established themselves as healthy wild populations.

It is not at all impossible that somebody may have the dumb and cruel idea to do something similar with tigers: i.e., stick them in a game preserve, for the purpose of their being shot and killed.  And if tigers escape, well, that is too bad, but never mind, the authorities can be paid off.

A more enlightened idea about what to do with privately collected and raised tigers might be to create a sanctuary, whose mission would be to keep as many individuals alive and healthy as possible, and to preserve genetic diversity.  Whether any of the tigers in that hypothetical sanctuary could be reintroduced into an Asian ecosystem, once a secure wildlife refuge could be established in, say, India, or southern China, or any of the Southeast Asian countries, is not impossible, but not assured.


Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.