Mr. Wrinkles – A Brief History of the Chinese Shar-Pei

It has become a traditional practice when embarking to trace the lineage of any breed to endeavor to prove that it has been in existence–if not quite from the days of the Garden of Eden, then at least from the dawn of civilization!

Breed historians bend over backwards to propound theories that their breed has come down in a completely unbroken line from the mists of time, that their favorites were caressed by Egyptian Pharaohs or gamboled in the well-tended gardens of ancient Greek Emperors.

For confirmation, they point to monuments or engravings which show a dog they think bears a similarity to their chosen breed.

Many of us, outside the charmed circle, will often struggle to find any real resemblance between the artistic representation and their supposed modern-day equivalent but this rarely stops these fanciful tales being repeated ad nauseum.

This is certainly the case with the fascinating breed I wish to feature this month–the extraordinary Shar Pei.

I remember well this breed coming to the UK back in the early 1980s and being, as a child, thoroughly captivated by it.

Newspaper headlines loudly proclaimed it as, “the world’s rarest dog” and programs obviously focused heavily upon those unique wrinkled looks, like it was wearing a coat several sizes too large for it.

Even from this early age I wanted to find out all I could about various breeds of dog and how they evolved, and this exotic-looking dog proved particularly intriguing. However, historic information was very scarce and what was available often just repeated the same old lines; apparently this was an ancient breed that had existed in China for over 2,000 years.

The proof of such statements seemed to rest solely upon (decidedly unwrinkled) effigies of dogs found in tombs.

The book, The Chinese Shar-Pei, by Paul Strand and Eve C. Olsen (1980) has this to say about those figurines:

Posted by AnthonyA on Oct 20 2022. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.