Rabbit Reason

Nothing much surprises me in Harbin any more.

It never occurred to me that any sensible adult would buy a pet in the street on a whim, but then again, there must be some reason why there are so many hawkers by the road with carts piled with cages, fishbowls and cardboard boxes.

Before Taekwondo class, I came across Liu Lina and a small crowd of classmates gathered around the stairs above our dojang. The girls were cooing over a couple of tiny white balls of fur, and the guys were sitting around pretending to look disinterested.

Seeing me, Lina waved me over:

"I bought some rabbits! One boy, one girl," while demonstrating the proper rabbit-handling technique.

"Yes. Yes you did." I struggle for an appropriate response "But why!?"

She seems baffled by this existential poser.

"They're cute?"

And that they were. While Tianyou fed the boy rabbit a chunk of orange ice lolly...


... and Tai Guang pretended to eat the girl rabbit, I took some photos of the poor, doomed creatures, and asked questions.

It turned out that they cost 20RMB (£1.30) and that Lina bought them with her parents' blessing. Put like that, I suppose the question becomes "Why wouldn't you buy a couple of pets?"

Two days later and disaster had struck.

"The boy rabbit died." Lina told me, somewhat forlornly.

"Why? What happened?"

"I think I fed it too much," she confessed "撑死了 (it died from overeating)", before doing an impression, arms askew, tongue lolling from her mouth.

She nodded sagely - a good death for a rabbit - then laughed as if to say it was alright, at least she still had another, before skipping away.