ABSTRACT
There are two distinct but interrelated aspects of the presence of animals in the world of people. Firstly, they figure at least potentially as neighbours in their own right – neighbours who can exchange glance with us and communicate with us, and who are notably able to be the agents of their own considered actions. These characteristics of mutual awareness, distance, and recognition are hallmarks of a neighbourly relation, which in this sense differs from that of friendship (for which it has potential, but which it does not include). Animal rights activists and children’s books authors often hasten to describe animals as ‘our friends’, but I believe the concept of neighbour relations is much more productive. Just as with any independent-minded human neighbour whom we must respect for what he or she is, animal neighbours may also choose to not enter into anything beyond the most basic aspect of the neighbour relation itself – which I take to mean the mutual recognition of each other’s right to an independent existence, one alongside the other, including the right to be left alone by the other. I hope to argue that this original good neighbourliness between humans and animals does still survive in China, and also that it is being revived in some ways, despite all the evidence to the contrary in a land ravaged by centuries of human efforts to remake the landscape for human purposes only.
