Girl About Globe | The political bite of Dog Year

Linda Kennedy

Just two weeks in, and I have high hopes for the Year of the Dog. It has the potential to help with world peace, feminist issues and the emergence of satire in China. Am I barking mad? I don’t think so.

Donald Trump was born in a bygone Year of the Dog, 1946. This fact was unknown to me until a shopping mall in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, erected a Trump dog statue, which was posted on social media by the People’s Daily and went viral under the hashtag #TrumpDog. The statue is half-hound, half Trump. Imagine a mythical faun, which has the legs of a goat and the torso of a man, moved to a fairytale rust-belt kingdom with no industries, and evolved accordingly. Or, shorter, it’s like a cartoon cross-breed called Donald Dog.

I checked out what it means when the Chinese Zodiac animal under which you were born comes up again on the 12 year repeated cycle. The general opinion is that it results in bad luck. Happy Dog Year indeed. Can the rhythms of lunar new years succeed where everything else has failed – by piling up enough misfortune to finally get rid of Trump? Is China actually all-powerful and, if Zhongnanhai can’t work against you, the Zodiac has a bash? Trump might have been able to befriend Xi Jinping, but you can’t have a hamburger to neutralise the power of the Dog.

Me, I’m keeping an eye on what transpires over the next few months. Trump once wanted to label China a currency manipulator. If he changes that to a luck manipulator, we’ll know Dog Year 2018 has bitten.

As for that statue – did it actually look like Trump? I was going to Hong Kong’s Pet Fair, a festival of fur where the animals wear costumes to rival Glastonbury. (They’re more ‘glam-imals’ than animals.) There, I showed dog owners the TrumpDog statue. Yes, most pronounced, it looked like the President. And did their dogs show any similarities to Trump, I asked, curious about a physical as well as a zodiacal link between the President and pooches. One owner surveyed her pram, which was filled with dogs, and pointed. ‘This one.’ ‘Why?’ ‘He’s naughty’.

Many owners immediately dismissed any likeness. And perhaps the clearest judgement on whether or not any dogs in attendance resembled Trump came from the cats. There were a few pussies at the Pet Fair, none of which looked remotely worried about being grabbed.

Hong Kong dogs, it turned out, are more likely to resemble the women in Trump’s life rather than the President himself. Whenever a poodle with long blonde fur strolled by, it was hard not to shout Ivanka and see if it came to heel. And there was one tawny dog that wore a tiara with a rosette, yet issued not even a yelp in protest at this attire. Over-dressed, silent? Surely….Melania? 

Other issues. The TrumpDog statue establishes Shanxi province as a new, and unlikely, centre of satire. It’s something I hope they take further. Would it be too much to hope for a sign in Mandarin encouraging actual dogs to mount the statue? #HumpLikeTrump

Lastly, feminist matters. Even if none of those dogs were called Ivanka or Melania, the plural term for the female of the species could totally work for human women. Given the amplification of female voices in 2017, might Year of the Dog be renamed Year of the Bitch? It reclaims the word and, given Trump is a dog, there will never been a better year to harness the power of the Chinese Zodiac for feminist ends.