Today I met a young ESL student from China, who told me his name was Kyle -- a clever rhyming Anglicisation of his actual Chinese given name. We talked about ESL, and the importance of finding people to talk to. For whatever reason I made a passing reference to raccoons -- dead air, blank stare. Kyle had never heard of them. A Google image search showed him the first pictures of raccoons he'd ever seen. More searching confirmed that China did not have raccoons, but -- they did have something called raccoon dogs...
The raccoon dog -- another Chinese knock off?
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Do they, ah, always look like raccoons with really bad gas?[/caption]
Kyle hadn't ever seen one of these before either. Turned out they're native range, according to Wikipedia's entry is Eastern China. Kyle comes from central China. They're really dogs which bear a superficial resemblance to raccoons. In China, and other parts of Asia, along with the countries of the former Soviet Union, they're farm-bred for their fur -- there are lots of YouTube videos of raccoon dogs being skinned. The Tanooki Suit found in Super Mario Bros. 3 was inspired by the tanuki, or Japanese raccoon dog.The Wikipedia entry listed both a Chinese name for the raccoon dog: 貉, and an alternative: 貉子. Kyle was unfamiliar with either of them. We had some fun with Google Translate. While "貉子" translated as "raccoon," "貉" alone, translated as "Badger-like animal (naturally Kyle didn't know badgers either), and "子" by itself translated as "Child."
Kyle knew what squirrels were, but the Chinese version is smaller. He recognized skunks, but had only ever seen pictures of them. Before he and his aunt left he entered my email into his iPhone, which now grows wild all over China. Click the images to enlarge them.
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Reblogged this on The Story of a Tree Frog and commented:
The Beijing Zoo showcased a couple of raccoons, looking, well, dead.. Piled up on the branches of a sad, synthetic tree.. Growing up, my spirit animal was a Raccoon. There's not much of a story behind this one, as with many of my antics.. Honest coincidences and candid discoveries. Apparently, Raccoons are curious, dexterous, charismatic, sociable yet secretive, and are masters of disguise, among others.. Sounds about right. What are Mockingbirds? Recently, I was knighted a Mockingbird. Now I've got myself rambling. And suddenly I remember the time I told R her spirit animal was a Platypus, and she resented me for it (not to mention she could resented me for almost anything). She asked me why, and I laughed loudly as I usually do when I don't know what to say. Privately, I'm thinking, "Because you look like one, duh." Mockingbird out-
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