вЂњThe Most Perfect Little BeautyвЂќДЄttended to by eunuchs, living in a marble pavilion atop silk cushions, sometimes even granted an official rank at court, the Pekingese was cultivated for millennia to have an air of self-importance for which the breed is still famed. Pekingese Cheng Yen and Gypsy Pearl, appearing in a 1913 Kennel bluebook of dogs. Let its body be shaped like that of a hunting lion spying for its prey.вЂќ Let its forelegs be bent so that it shall not desire to wander far, or leave the Imperial precincts. вЂњвЂ¦ Let its eyes be large and luminous let its ears be set like the sails of war junk let its nose be like that of the monkey god of the Hindus. вЂњLet the Lion Dog be small let it wear the swelling cape of dignity around its neck let it display the billowing standard of pomp above its back,вЂќ the вЂњdropped pearlsвЂќ of wisdom begin. Nonetheless, it inspired the various Western standards for the breed. The transformation complete, his heart remained the same size.ДЄ much later, but just as romanticized description of the Pekingese is a long-form poem breathlessly entitled вЂњPearls Dropped from the Lips of Her Imperial Majesty Tzu-Hsi Dowager Empress of the Flowery Land.вЂќ While the dowager empress bred Pekingese in her royal kennel (as well as Pugs and Shih Tzu), itвЂ™s not clear whether the list of desired Peke traits is authentic, or the florid prose of some later fancier. One legend held that a lion that fell in love with a marmoset monkey begged the gods to shrink him down in size so that his love could be requited. Some historians correlate the arrival of Buddhism in China with the development of the breed: Lions are central figures in the story of the Enlightened One, and since Asiatic tigers had long been extinct in China, its devout Buddhist monks developed dog breeds вЂ“ including the Lhasa Apso, Tibetan Mastiff and, yes, the Pekingese вЂ“ with leonine traits, such as blunt muzzles and heavy head furnishings. Very little was known about these pear-shaped, flat-faced toy dogs outside of their native China, where they could only be owned by the imperial family and were said to date back to the Han dynasty, more than two millennia ago. The dogs were found in an apartment belonging to the emperorвЂ™s aunt, who had committed suicide as the military forces approached. They set fire to the elaborate cedar buildings, which took two days to burn вЂ“ a cultural destruction of such magnitude it has been called ChinaвЂ™s Ground Zero.ДЄmid the jade carvings and bronze statues at the Old Summer Palace, as the royal compound was called, the military men stumbled across living treasures вЂ“ five Pekingese that somehow hadnвЂ™t been killed to keep them out of foreign hands when the emperor and his family fled. When news that the negotiation for a truce had turned deadly, with some of the English-led delegation tortured and killed, thousands of British soldiers returned to destroy the 800 acres of imperial gardens and palaces. They tied up their horses with yards of imperial silk, smashed priceless porcelain, and ransacked jewelry and artifacts. In 1860, during the height of the Second Opium War, British and French soldiers scaled the 15-foot walls of Yuanmingyuan, or the вЂњGardens of Perfect Brightness,вЂќ in the Chinese city of Beijing, which the Europeans called Peking.

That certainly was the case with the Pekingese, one of the worldвЂ™s most ancient breeds вЂ“ and one of its most mysterious until about a century ago. ***Дogs are pretty uncomplicated creatures вЂ“ what you see is what you get, which is what we love about them.Д«ut sometimes, breeds find themselves in the center of very complex human interactions. Through them, we rediscover our globeвЂ™s cultural diversity and heritage.Д®ach week, without even leaving our couches, we travel to a different place and time to meet the people who developed the snoozing bundles of fur at our sides. If civilization is the intersection of a group of people with their environment, so too are their dogs: With coats that evolved to survive the local climate, body styles developed to navigate native terrains, and characters that fit into the social mores of the day, our purebred dogsВ are living, breathing moments of history, reflections of the far-flung cultures that developed and nurtured them. Other breeds were brought into being by specific cultures or classes of people. Some breeds - like the Doberman Pinscher, Teddy Roosevelt Terrier, and Cesky TerrierВ - owe their existence to just one visionary person. Though we often donвЂ™t think about them in this way, dogs are really about people - those long-ago (or, sometimes, not so long-ago) figures who developed particular breeds for particular tasks.

Looty the looter