A number of medium sized birds in cages the size of shoe boxes, attracted
much attention. These included green budgerigars which Australians can
still see flying wild in flocks of up to a thousand. But the birds that
caught my attention were the little green and grey birds (or ‘GG
birds’) which were smaller than sparrows, and had leashes around
their necks. Yes, leashes!
And most of these vendors had them. All along the dark green iron fences,
wooden perches about 40 cm (12 inches) long had been jammed into them.
And on the end of these sticks stood these captive birds, tied by the
neck to the end of their perch by about 12 cm (5 inches) of string. I’m
sure that they must’ve had some sort of ring around their neck,
because from time-to-time the vendor would knock them off their perch
so they just dangled inches below. There was never any hint of choking,
and after a few moments, with a few quick flutters, the GG bird would
find its way back onto the stick again.
One of these GG birds was especially impressive. It didn’t have
a leash, and it was sitting on the vendor’s hand who was feeding
it out of a small plastic pill container. But only momentarily. After
placing 4 small paper ‘coins’ into the open cage, the vendor
tried to push the objecting bird inside, but the little critter was struGGling
to extract just one more grain of food from the top of the bottle. No
such luck. If this bird wanted to get a feed, it was going to have to
work for it. And it did.
Once inside the cage, the GG bird promptly picked up a paper coin with
its beak, brought it straight back to the vendor and placed it in his
hand. This caused him to bring the seeds up to the bird, but only long
enough to take one peck from it. Then it was strictly off-limits again.
Into the cage the bird was forced again. And the same action was repeated.
So after all 4 disks were brought back to the vendor, the bird had managed
to get 4 pecks of seed.
So how much was such a clever bird?
“It’s taken me a whole month to train this bird,” was
his reply, “I’ll sell it to you for 300 RMB (AUD$64), complete
with its bamboo cage.”
I wasn’t going to buy ANY bird, but I was still curious about the
prices.
I asked another vendor about the price of his GG bird on a leash, but
without a cage. Just the perch.
“This one can bring coins,” he explained, and immediately
demonstrated the bird’s talents. “It’s 60 RMB (AUD$12.75).”
Further along there was a vendor with about 20 GG birds frantically crammed
in a cage only twice the size of the small single-bird cages.
Maybe these would be cheaper. They were. But that’s because they
were only recently captured. These were wild birds! And the price for
one of these, without the cage, without the training and without the leash
was … 5 RMB (AUD$1).
So in reality, these vendors were selling cages and bird-training services
at inflated prices!
Anyway, I’d seen enough. But as I began to leave, I noticed some
common house sparrows. One of them was in a small bamboo cage similar
to the other one I’d seen.
And the price for this sparrow and the cage (but no tricks)?
“500 RMB (AUD$106),” the vendor replied, obviously thinking
this foreigner was loaded with money and was just desperate to own his
own sparrow.
“Yeah, right!” I said sarcastically, and walked off in amazement.
Other Articles by Jame Taris:
Shopping in Shanghai
Chinese Blindman Massage
Excerpt taken from Aussie Guest in China, written by James Taris.
For more information about the book, go to
http://www.jamestaris.com/ebook-AussieGuestInChina.htm
For more information about James Taris and his other books, go to
http://www.JamesTaris.com
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