Talk:Pekingese

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Extended version

I wrote the extended version... Don't know what mistakes are in it since I did it on a lark - though I know more about pekes than most people do! --152.163.252.228 05:40, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC) User:Mlo

Good job! That's the sort of person who *should* be adding tons of stuff to articles. I'm making an editing pass but i'm delighted to see info here. I'll remove the msg:stub, too. Elf | Talk 16:05, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Now I have some questions. I remember that there were 4 dogs given as a gift to someone by the imperial court but I don't remember what the occasion was or to whom to gift was given. Do you know? Also, your text said that "some affection must be withheld" to avoid jealousy over a child--I assume that meant withholding affection from the Peke, not the child!? so I clarified that. Elf | Talk 16:46, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I am unaware of any gift of 4 dogs, usually it was a pair. I added some history of gifts and the 1860 pillage, which should not be described as a gift. --ClemMcGann 11:47, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Interesting. In a quick peek (peke? ;-) ) in two books, they're quite circumspect about the origins; one says simply "the first 4 pekes arrived in the west in 1860" and the other says "the peke first cam to britain in 1860 following the overthowing by the british of China's summer palace." Which your new addition says with much more interesting details. So I removed the gift line. Elf | Talk 20:55, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I’m not enough into Wiki to write this up properly: --ClemMcGann 01:03, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Origins

There are a few other things that could be said about Pekingese. Their origin, as already noted they are wolf descendants. They hunted in large packs, attacking prey much larger than themselves. Which is why their noses are recessed. They can bite into the flanks of their victim and hang on without being suffocated. They have a fold over their noses to protect it from any blood.

An expansion on the legends would be nice. As would the Empress’s description of them.

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in the Bishop collection, there is a carved crystal of a Pekingese with two pups. It dates from the Ming Dynasty.

Is this a metaphorical thing? I can't find any records of this in actual Chinese writings. Pekingese had a role in ceremonials and in diplomacy. Here reference could be made to ‘sleeve’ pekes. They occur rarely and randomly. They cannot be used for breeding. A mandarin would have one of these in his sleeve, as he negotiated. If there was a problem, he would be all nods and smiles, however the dog would growl or bark.

I used the term ‘opium war’ since wiki uses it. At the time it was called a ‘trade war’.

Officially the Emperor didn’t flee the Forbidden City. He merely went on a summer vacation. There wasn’t enough room for the Pekingese on the wagons. So some serving girls had to get off to make room for them. These unfortunates then had their throats silt and were cast into wells. This poisoned the wells, denying them to the ‘foreign devils’.

No Pekingese were seen outside of the Chinese Palaces prior to 1860. For the next thirty years, they were often stolen. The Chinese used to crop their tails to make them less valuable. From 1890 there are instances of Pekes being presented as gifts.

I am not sure if this is actual Chinese history. I understand that there a many embellished and sometimes falsified accounts of the so-called practices of the Chinese during the Qing dynasty, especially concerning the political events of the Imperial Throne. Killing the children of concubines (aside from the occasional lady plotting) goes against the culture surrounding the emperor. Once again, I cannot find any record of this practice. I would warn against using the records of Western travelers. For one thing, why would a Western stranger even be allowed into the inner chambers? It might be inappropriate to add: The Imperial Chinese Court had many concubines. Their children were usually killed at birth. They were then given a Pekingese puppy to wet nurse. The results are, that modern ladies find Pekingese extremely affectionate and faithful and that Pekingese have poor maternal instincts. --ClemMcGann 01:03, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Disambiguation

Moved from HTML comment inside the article, 21 February 2017

Suggestions:

1. In linguistics, please consider the suffix "-ese" is used to denote 1) inhabitants of the place or 2) their language: Portuguese, Faroese; Japanese; Vietnamese; Viennese; Cantonese; Shanghainese; Hongkongnese; Taiwanese; Beijingese. The word "Pekingese" therefore create a confusion for a reader who has no knowledge of the names/types of the dog species/breeds.
2. "Pekingese" is a very close synonym to "Beijingese", which denotes the people of Beijing or the Beijing people. Some Beijing people view it as derogatory, detracting, and humiliating in a sense to some extent, because their meaning are too close to one another. And therefore, "Pekingese" should not be used as it has 2 meanings: the people, or the dog. The term "Peking Lion Dog" is preferred.
3. Please consider using "Peking Lion Dog" without the suffix "-ese" as the "Peking Lion Dog" fully describes this particular type of Lion Dog and the origin of where it came from, namely the place once called "Peking", or "Beijing" as of date. In addition, please consider "Peking Duck" as a reference, in which the suffix "-ese" is not used. Nobody calls it "Pekingese Duck", everybody calls it the "Peking Duck". Thus, the dog should be called the "Peking Lion Dog", or the "Lion Dog" for short.

Please revise this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hastymashi (talk • contribs) 00:49, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Hastymashi is only sporadically active (last edited about 2.5 months ago), but the concern raised is legitimate. We're routinely moving (by naturally disambiguating) animal breed names that can be confused with real human populations (as was done with Australian White sheep, Algerian Arab sheep, Argentine Criollo cattle, and many others), or which are generic "from so-and-so placename" adjectives (thus we have Havanese dog, Siamese cat, Nicastrese goat, Dalmatian dog, etc., etc.) This is just another of these cases. Some will try to object on WP:PRIMARYTOPIC grounds, but this argument has never been successful to date; not misleading the readership always takes precedence over "how we usually do things" argument to tradition and wikilawyering. Hastymashi's item #3 probably would not fly, because Peking Lion Dog is nowhere near the most common name of the breed, even if we might want to be sensitive to WP:SYSTEMICBIAS concerns. I'm not sure those would be taken very seriously by most editors in this kind of case; lots of animal breed names contain adjectives that were formerly applied to people commonly and which are now largely obsolete in that sense, but which retain historical and arts uses as general adjectives (e.g. "Siamese" not "Thai" is the proper adjective to use in reference to the Kingdom of Siam, just as Pekingese is correct and Beijingese an anachronism in reference to Peking before it became Beijing).

The likely target article name is Pekingese dog. We don't use parenthetic disambiguation, like Pekingese (dog) because it's less natural-English a name, fails WP:CONCISE by adding characters that serve no purpose, and indicates one dog whose individual name is Pekingese (the convention is used in Category:Individual dogs, Category:Individual cats, Category:Individual horses and 43 subcategories thereof, and the rest). I won't RM this now, though. Breed article moves often seem to cause more emotive drama than just about anything; I don't do more than a few at a time, and already have several ongoing.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:45, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

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