Source: reddit
After making his owner rich, this border collie gets to live in a $500,000 pet mansion in Beijing
Over the past year, builders have transformed the two-acre lot into his “paradise,” a sign informs guests at the wooden gates. Beyond them lie a spa, a trampoline, an indoor pool, two murals of Sylar’s face and a party room with chalkboard walls, where someone has scrawled: “I love you.
”Sylar paused at the tender message on a recent afternoon. Then he lifted his leg and urinated.
This is what half a million dollars can buy a border collie in Beijing. It’s also a symbol of love, economic progress and the Internet’s unique power to make you famous — sometimes overnight.
“Before I had Sylar, I had nothing to live for,” said owner Zhou Tianxiao, 31, scratching his dog’s ears. “He gave me a purpose.”
Five decades after Chairman Mao’s Red Guards were known to kill pet dogs — a “bourgeois” accessory the communist leader sought to quash during his purge of Western values — China’s youths are increasingly lavishing money on animals.
The Chinese are projected to spend the equivalent of $7 billion on furry friends by 2022, a surge from $2.6 billion last year, according to the German market research firm Euromonitor.
Theories abound as to why affluent Chinese seem so devoted to their pets; poorer folks in urban centers tend to be priced out, because licensing dogs can cost hundreds of dollars. But analysts tie some of the fervor to the country’s rigid “one-child” policy, in effect from 1979 until early 2016.
[China lifts one-child policy amid worries over graying population]
Marriage rates and birthrates have fallen in recent years as a generation without siblings, saddled with extra family pressure to shine, has pursued more education and often refused to settle down, said Cheng Li, a China scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
“They have a sense of independence,” Li said, “but they still want a companion.”
Zhou, an only child himself, used to feel lonely.
Four years ago, the lanky Beijing native was unemployed and living downtown with his grandmother. He had dropped out of school at 15 and spent most of his time playing video games at Internet cafes.
He feared he would drift that way…
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