What is the most charming creature in the world?

Pigeons wouldn't exactly be on the top 10 list of many in the West who dub the red-eyed, food-scavenging birds as "rats with feathers."

Wang Shixiang, on the other hand, wouldn't hesitate to nominate his beloved pet pigeons.

In China, the practice of pigeon-rearing stems back more than 3,000 years. But the 91-year-old pigeon expert said the culture of raising pet pigeons is dying.

Hutongs and siheyuan courtyards (an enclosed quadrangle area which consists of several rooms around a central yard) have given way to high-rise apartment buildings, where it is difficult for people to keep pet pigeons.

Meanwhile, a lot of people have shifted to carrier pigeons, in hope of winning prizes in competitions.

Wang's fondness for the feathered city birds comes from the days when he raised and treasured his beloved pets bathing in the sun in his courtyard home in downtown Beijing.

"Even a common moment like bathing in their daily life would bring out the real beauty inside of pigeons," he said.

He could picture the pigeons flying out of the cage and gathered by the bathtub. A few hesitated to tap the water with their beaks, he recalled.

One jumped down and flapped its wings to stir up sprays of water. Its companions crowded and pecked at each other as they watched by the side. Finally, they fell into the water one after another, and enjoyed the bath themselves.

After that, the pigeons laid in the sun, spread out their wings and combed their beautiful feathers carefully.

An angry male dianzi, a breed featuring a snow-white body and black head and tail, fought away a malicious intruder, which attempted to harass his female companion.

The sounds of coo-coo and fluttering wings filled the courtyard like music to Wang's ears.

"Everything feels so comfortable, peaceful and natural the plant, pigeons, and myself," Wang recalled.

A retired scholar with the Central Research Institute of Culture and History of China, Wang was born into a well-off family.

Once a rambunctious boy, he took great pleasure in outdoor games. He devoted his leisure time to raising crickets, pigeons, dogs and eagles all joys of old Beijingers.

He still cherished memories of listening to grasshoppers chirping in the winter and training eagles to hunt for rabbits during his youthful days.

Wang once wrote several weekly English compositions about the pigeon. As a result, his teacher in an American primary school threatened to mark "poor" on all his articles if Wang continued to do so.

He took along his flying pets when he entered Peking University. He even built a pigeon house on campus.

Wang's enthusiasm for pigeons also influenced his wife, Yuan Quanyou. She sketched these beautiful birds in many paintings.

Dying tradition

Though many of such traditional joys disappeared in the past decades, Wang particularly laments the fact that very few people continue to raise pet pigeons today.

He is even more frustrated with people's ignorance of indigenous Chinese pet pigeons.

"A lot of Chinese youngsters divide the pigeons they have seen simply into two categories: the grey carrier bird and the white dove, normally recognized as the symbol of world peace," he said.

"Both of those are actually foreign breeds," he said.

The native Chinese pigeons, he said, are diverse in appearance and breed.

No one may have a clearer idea of various pigeons and their historical background than Wang himself.

The scholar has read through multitudes of classics and ancient documents on this topic alone.

He has dug into the evolution of their rearing among the Chinese and the inventions developed from pigeons, such as the pigeon whistles.

He said that he believes a jade bird, excavated from the Yin ruins in Henan Province in 1976, indicated that ancient Chinese began to tame the wild pigeon and keep them as pets in China more than 3,000 years ago.

"Notable characteristics are seen on the jade piece to distinguish a pet pigeon from its wild relatives, such as the short mouth, a round head and wide eyelids," Wang said.

Abundant historical records and antique poems referring to pigeons added more evidence to Wang's study.

He told the story about the battle between armies of the Song (960-1279) and Western Xia (1038-1277) dynasties around the year of 1041.

One day, the Song army discovered several sealed wooden boxes alongside the route of their march to the enemy's camp. The captain commanded his soldiers to open all the boxes, and suddenly hundreds of pigeons tied with whistles flew out into the sky, betraying their movements and their location.

They next found themselves trapped in an ambush set up by the Western Xia army.

Although the Song army didn't lose the battle, innocent pigeons with their whistles lost their lives.

"I think the Western Xia people learned to tie whistles on the pigeon from their Song counterparts, a fruit of cultural clashes and communication between two sides," Wang said. "However, they adopted it in the war."

Wang has also studied the different breeds of the indigenous Chinese pigeons, mostly portrayed in sketches and paintings by ancient master artists that have been kept in the Palace Museum and national library.

"Quite a few breeds are in danger," Wang said. "Some may have already become extinct."

Wang once asked a photographer to take photos of native Chinese pet pigeons in the 1980s. But their several search attempts at Beijing's bird fairs resulted in disappointment.

He said he visited other pigeon lovers outside Beijing several years ago just to glimpse some rare breeds, but the number is very small.

"You just can't imagine how much people loved pigeons in the past," Wang said. "Nobles and ordinary people, the rich and the poor, the elderly and children all were crazy about the enchanting creature."

Pigeon peddlers were frequently seen shouldering large bamboo cages, or dakua, in bustling markets. Some carried small ones, xiaokua, in their arms.

They also sat on benches with three or four such cages holding nearly a hundred pigeons laid in front. The pigeons were of a broad variety, ranging from common to rare breeds, meeting most people's needs.

"It used to be a part of the old Beijing. Yet such a lifestyle seems to have disappeared forever," Wang said.

"Foreign grey carrier pigeons and white doves have dominated our skies, squares, ads and TV programs. Where are our gorgeous Chinese pets?"

Consequently, he has written a lot to make the public more aware of Chinese pet pigeons. A series of his articles on pigeons have been published in Beijing Evening News.

For pigeon lovers, the best reference is "Mingdai Gejing, Qingdai Gepu (Pigeons Culture of Ming and Qing Dynasties)," published five years ago. Wang co-edited the album along with Zhao Chuanji, an expert with the Shandong Agriculture College. It offers very detailed features and illustrations about pigeon-rearing in imperial palaces in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties.

The book is considered as a dictionary and recognized as excellent reading of the Chinese pigeon culture. However, Wang himself isn't quite satisfied. "Many of the illustrations are black and white and originate from lively paintings of those ancient masters serving in the palace," he said. "I prefer colored photos. Meanwhile, there is little information and records of pigeon-raising in South China and other far away regions."

He said he will continue researching as much as he can. "It is my dream to see a large loft of Chinese pigeons, like broken pieces of rosy clouds or swift shooting stars, flying over our cities for the rest of my life," he said.

(China Daily October 26, 2005)