Shanghai bank employee Frances Chen spends about a fifth of her monthly salary on her poodle, Cookie, one of the millions of pet owners turning China's pet care industry into one of the fastest growing in the world.
Chen takes Cookie to a groomer for a weekly shower and feeds it imported food, costing her some 2,000 yuan ($320) a month. "I want to give him the best," said the single, 26-year-old who lives with her parents. "He's our kid. The only difference is that he can't speak human languages."
Once banned by Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong as a bourgeois pastime, having a pet has now become a symbol of financial success in China, where consultants Euromonitor forecast the pet care sector to grow by more than half to 15.8 billion yuan ($2.6 billion) by 2019, outpacing the world's biggest market the United States, which is expected to grow just over 4 percent this year to $60.6 billion.