Foundinchina.com

The cicadas provide a constant chorus in most parts of China during the heat of summer and the air is alive with winged crawlers the size, shape, and colour of which are an entomologists dream. Insectivore numbers are maintained at a manageable level by a variety of winged assailants that never have to travel far to find their next meal.

Inside the teachers’ residence, also home to all manner of creatures (some more welcome than others), university authorities have decided to show Mother Nature who’s boss by engaging in chemical warfare against the building’s ecosystem.

Any biologist will inform you that you really don’t want to upset ecological balance in the name of a short term fix. But you can’t tell that to the emperor – instructions from above are rarely questioned in China. Thus, if the guy at the top of the hierarchy says “all useful, harmless, cute creatures with four legs and a tail must be eradicated for the glory of Jimei and the Motherland”, then that is what will happen. What follows is a scaled down version of the Cultural Revolution.

Here’s the thing: when I first arrived here my apartment building was home to cats, rats, cockroaches, geckos, and mosquitoes. Yes, there are thousands of other rarely sighted life forms, but the five mentioned are, or were, the ubiquitous players in this tale. It was good to see a few cats scurrying around the halls and helping to keep rats at a workable level of infestation. And the gecko that came with my apartment was a good friend last summer, a real force to be reckoned with for the mosquitoes and (smaller) roaches that dared to entered my modest living space.

There was harmony and balance in this lush valley for a few weeks back then. But no longer. Someone moaned about felines failing to use the toilet facilities provided and this complaint found its way to the top at a time when Jimei was in the grip of a fever induced by the imminent arrival of inspectors from the Ministry of Education. The order was given to remove the cat from education by any means necessary, lest the cuddly ones offended the inspection team and brought shame to the university. I haven’t heard a meow or a purr since.

After the feline eradication came the serial execution of the humble gecko. I don’t know what logic lay behind this policy but they sprayed the building with reptile repellant and my wall crawling buddy disappeared. 

The upshot of all this was an extended honeymoon for rats, roaches, and mosquitoes. Since then it’s been a real party down here at teacher’s camp, especially for one of my neighbours who awoke in the middle of the night to find a flea ridden rodent nipping at his big toe.   

My girlfriend, who is from Guangdong province, was horrified to learn of the campaign to liquidate lizards and cats, explaining that it was a waste of good food. However, served with the right sauce, the proliferation of rats is apparently of some compensation. In case you’re wondering, I do my best to keep her out of the kitchen.

Well, the inspectors vanished as quickly as they appeared, followed by a palpable sigh of relief from the university bigwigs. The cats just vanished.

Outdoors the campus continues to blossom nicely, thanks to a climate conducive to a wide range of flora and the concerted effort of numerous workers. Most notable in the last fortnight have been the fruit-laden mango trees that line the roads around the campus. Unsurprisingly, this was another short-lived aesthetic as various groups sought to plunder the fruit, only to find that their eagerness to avoid missing out on bounty not ready for picking left them with nothing but a sour taste. 

It was a free-for-all in the broadest sense. Professional fruit merchants came with specialised equipment; students simply shimmied up the trunk and shook the branches; keen amateurs brought sticks to swing wildly at the fruit in the lower reaches; and the friends of the Earth are still waiting at the base of each tree for the fruit to drop naturally. They’ll be waiting a long time, as the former three groups have laid bare every mango tree on campus and beyond. 

I’m going to be on the road for the next three or four weeks, gathering stories of frustration and calamity that only travel in China can guarantee. It also guarantees some incredible scenery and encounters with the kind of people that would not only wait for the fruit to drop, but would offer it to you as well.

The article that accompanies the above picture suggests that being a cat in China has been a tough job for a long time.    

When I worked in Luoyang there was a novelty factor about a cat sighting – a bit like spotting a snow leopard in the wild. That novelty didn’t extend to the instances in the backstreets where felines could be seen squirming for release from their bondage outside establishments that didn’t resemble pet shops: a case of today’s stray cat being tomorrow’s gourmet lunch.

Here in Fujian, at least around the campus at Jimei, felines seem to be held in slightly higher regard. The campus residents are a lot friendlier towards cats than I have witnessed elsewhere in China, and have been known to feed them rather than feed on them. It is common to see small groups of cats sunning themselves in the open while the kittens nip playfully at the grown up’s ears.  

I’ve come to the conclusion that their numbers must have something to do with the prodigious rat population.  This preponderance of rodents, together with the locals’ tolerance, makes Jimei something of a feline heaven in China. Or is it?

The rats here are big and bold – just ask my colleague down the corridor who awoke a few weeks ago to the sensation of something large, brown, and alive crawling around at the foot of his bed. In deference to any rat lovers who may be reading, I’ll refrain from describing the furry intruder’s last moments. 

Anything less than a fully fledged adult cat that attempts to take on one of these mega-vermin is likely to suffer a nasty shock. Rats here seem to have outgrown the gene that instinctively tells them to run and hide at the first sight of feline features. These creatures laugh in the face of whiskers. The old rules of cat ‘n mouse are a thing of the past. Perhaps the rats know it’s their year.

Edited to bring readers this latest news on the fate of Beijing’s Olympic felines.