From Nimrod comes word of the debate in China over the question of a national bird.
What does China have as a national bird?
Well, it doesn’t yet. The house sparrow, so common in China, and named one of the four vermins during the 1950’s (and killed en masse), has received a plurality of votes among ten birds in an unofficial online poll for China’s national bird. This has stirred up a conversation online about what constitutes a national bird, and more interestingly, about the national character and outlook of the common Chinese people.
Reading about the genesis of the 1950′s effort to eliminate the sparrow is telling about the ecological misunderstandings of the times. Looking at the propaganda posters pushing that campaign, you witness the mobilization of peasants ostensibly for public health. Of course what resulted was a public disaster.
So my vote, if I had one, would also be for the long suffering common sparrow as a testament to it’s heroic survival under the most uncommon threats to its existence.
