A line of glamorous visitors stood outside the Shanghai Museum twitching impatiently, tails flicking and whiskers quivering as they waited to be let in for the institution’s inaugural ancient Egypt cat night.
Feline tickets for Saturday night’s event sold out within days, as Shanghai’s devoted pet owners seized the chance to share an educational experience with their animals — and share the photos on the mostly pedigree cats’ personal social media accounts.
One pet owner said she had postponed a trip to Europe to ensure she could nab one of the 200 available tickets for her regal ginger “son.”
Photo: AFP
Trump — named for his physical and psychological resemblance to former US president Donald Trump — was dressed as a Chinese emperor, and blinked haughtily as journalists flocked around him with cameras.
“I cannot imagine my life right now without a cat,” his owner, Amy, said. “So I really can have the same feeling why Egyptian persons, they valued cats on such a level.”
The number of pets in China has soared, reaching more than 120 million last year, and cats are the most popular.
Photo: AFP
The trend is being driven largely by younger generations, many of whom see their “furred kids” as a cheaper substitute for human children, experts say.
The Shanghai Museum is capitalizing on that interest — Saturday’s event, heralded as a first in China, is just one of 10 planned cat nights.
As the guests of honor filed in, perched on shoulders or peering out of handbags, they had their vaccination and insurance records checked before they were transferred into a fleet of specially designed kitten-eared pet strollers.
Claire, who had dressed herself and her German Rex Tiedan in matching Egyptian costumes, said the exhibition showed that “cats have always been humans’ good friends.”
“Now young people are under great pressure, cats help us relieve a lot of mental pressure ... probably the same as in ancient times,” she said.
Cats were considered sacred in ancient Egypt, and associated in particular with Bast, a goddess of fertility, birth and protection.
“In the modern world, kitties are a symbol of cuteness, which is very different from” ancient Egypt, said a young woman named Feifei, clutching a resplendent white furball named Sticky Rice.
That cuteness has led to a surge in feline influencers and hopefuls. Many of the cats at the exhibition had their own social media accounts, and one or two appeared to have small teams helping produce content.
A section on Saqqara, a historic necropolis where archeologists unearthed dozens of cat mummies and artifacts from a newly discovered tomb, was filled with confused mews as the star visitors were photographed next to a Bast statue.
“There are many ancestors of cats here, I wanted to bring [Sticky Rice] to have a look,” Feifei said.
Like most of his fellow felines, Sticky Rice appeared largely unmoved by the historical experience.
Women’s accessories sold by some of the world’s most popular online shopping firms contained toxic substances sometimes hundreds of times above acceptable levels, authorities in Seoul said yesterday. Chinese giants including Shein, Temu and AliExpress have skyrocketed in popularity around the world in the past few years, offering a vast selection of trendy clothes and accessories at low prices. The explosive growth has led to increased scrutiny of their business practices and safety standards, including in the EU and South Korea, where Seoul officials have been conducting weekly inspections of items sold by online platforms. In the most recent inspection, 144 products from
Turning heads as they cruise past office buildings and malls, driverless taxis are slowly spreading through Chinese cities, prompting both wariness and wonder. China’s tech companies and vehicle manufacturers have poured billions of dollars into self-driving technology over the past few years in an effort to catch industry leaders in the US. Now the central city of Wuhan boasts one of the world’s largest networks of self-driving cars, home to a fleet of more than 500 taxis that can be hailed on an app just like regular rides. At one intersection in an industrial area of Wuhan, AFP reporters saw at least five
China and Vietnam yesterday inked 14 documents spanning cross-border railways to crocodile exports after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) met with new Vietnamese leader To Lam in Beijing. The Vietnamese president’s visit to Beijing, his first overseas trip since becoming the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam earlier this month, signals a desire between the two communist neighbors to strengthen ties, amid growing trade and investment, despite occasional clashes over boundaries in the South China Sea. “China has always regarded Vietnam as a priority in its neighborhood diplomacy, and supports Vietnam in adhering to the party leadership, taking the socialist
STATE OF EMERGENCY: The governor of Belgorod said that the situation in the border region was ‘extremely difficult and tense’ under Ukrainian bombardment Ukraine yesterday pressed its offensive in Russian territory and bombarded the border region of Belgorod, where the governor has declared a state of emergency. Ukrainian forces entered Kursk region on Tuesday last week and have taken dozens of settlements in the biggest attack by a foreign army on Russian soil since World War II. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Tuesday evening posted footage of a video call with his military chief, Oleksandr Syrsky, who said that “as of today, our troops have advanced in some areas by one to three kilometers.” Over the past day, “control over 40 square kilometers of territory has