China’s latest fashion trend is small and cute. It’s also alive.
Do you think these fish are cute? Would you think they were cute if they were inside a keychain?
Small means cute. In some cases it also means alive. Leave it to China to combine the two.
The latest fashion trend, according to Chinese media, is sporting keychains with tiny turtles and fish sealed inside. They are sold outside subway stations and are especially popular among elementary school children.
How do you feed the little buggers? You don't.
Vendors say the water, often colored, that the animals swim around in is nutrient-rich. "The water in the key ring has 'nutrients,'" one vendor told Global Times. "They can live for months inside there."
But nutrients or no, fish and turtles (no matter how diminutive) need to breathe. They will die within days, if not hours, of being put inside a sealed container, experts say.
What's worse? This isn't the first time China has embraced such tiny yet terrible trends. Get a load of this from the Shanghaiist blog, back during the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
Animal rights activists are predictably enraged, calling the new trend an example of "pure animal abuse." But the practice is totally legal.
Animal cruelty laws remain basically non-existent in China. There are literally none that pertain to domestic animals.
Cute and small, then. And very, very sad.
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