Pet-Owner Talk

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Anita He (贺文文)

How to talk about (and to) your four-legged friends

Ever feel like your pet could use some acupuncture? How about a weekend away in a doggy hotel and spa? For China’s booming pet market, there is seemingly no end to the ways people can choose to show love to their pets—whether it’s buying products and services to pamper them during their lifetime, or holding expensive funerals and even hiring mediums to “communicate” with them once they’re deceased.

With 68 million people in the country keeping one or more pets as of 2021, according to a report by the China Animal Agriculture Association, pet ownership is no longer just a matter of living with an animal in your home. It’s an emotional investment, a lifestyle, and a culture of interaction with non-human family members to love, have fun with, and sometimes complain about.

Like any subculture, pet ownership also comes with its own unique lingo that you might find yourself adopting once you welcome a non-human companion into your life.

Establishing an identity

When large numbers of urban Chinese families began keeping pets in their homes in the reform period of the 1980s, they called these animals 宠物 (chǒngwù, literally “pampered animal”) to distinguish them from livestock and other functional animals.

But you’ll rarely catch a young person calling their furry companion that today—rather, they’ll satirically refer to them as the 主子 (zhǔzi, master) or 毛孩子 (máoháizi, fur baby) who is demanding all their attention and eating them out of house and home:

My master’s daily routine consists of nothing but eating and sleeping.

Wǒ jiā zhǔzi de rìcháng, chúle chī jiùshì shuì.

我家主子的日常，除了吃就是睡。

Along with this reversal of power between pets and humans, a popular term for pet owners today, usually used self-deprecatingly by owners themselves, is 铲屎官 (chǎnshǐguān, excrement removal officer), indicating their main role in relation to the “master” of their home. Those with cats specifically may even refer to themselves as 猫奴 (māonú, slave to cats), perhaps due to cats being perceived as more demanding and emotionally distant toward their human owners, who nevertheless devote themselves to their feline masters’ care:

Have a cat for one day, be a slave for your whole life.

Yí rì yǎng māo, zhōngshēn wéi nú.

一日养猫，终身为奴。

Counting the cost

Keeping a pet isn’t cheap. The scale of China’s pet economy (宠物经济 chǒngwù jīngjì) is estimated to reach almost 446 billion yuan in 2023. Even if you stay away from fads like pet acupuncture, the cost of food, registration, medical checkups, and toys adds up, not to mention the money needed to obtain the pet in the first place for those seeking fancy breeds. This could be ruinous to young graduates juggling their first job and first apartment, while taking care of a pet to ease their loneliness:

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