Pei Su: The Pioneer

Species Unite

elizabeth novogratz

Philosophy, Society & Culture

5.0 • 911 Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2020

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"As children, we learnt respect for our elders and for authority, we learnt etiquette too, but rarely was it suggested that we extend any feelings towards animals, or indeed that animals have feelings. And because of this, many children in Asia grow up assuming animals exist to serve us, feed us, entertain us and clothe us; animals are useful 'moving objects', a literal translation of the Chinese word for animal." - Pei Su

Pei Su is truly a pioneer. In the early 90s, she was involved with the forming of Taiwan's very first animal right's organization. 30 years later, it still exists and Taiwan's animal right's movement is one of the fastest growing in Asia.

In 2011, Pei co-founded ACTAsia – an organization that's dedicated to creating change in China through humane education. What that means is that they go into schools and train the teachers to teach a 6-year program called Caring for Life Education. The kids are in the program from ages 6 -12 and they learn animal welfare, empathy toward animals, environmental issues, social welfare, and citizenship. To date, 80,000 kids have gone through Caring For Life and 2,000 teachers have been trained. Pei believes that things won't really change for animals in China until people start to view them differently – and, the best people for that job are the children – as they will create change for generations to come.

Transcript

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0:00.0	We are facing a big global challenge these days.
0:03.7	The climate change have shown us the icebergs melting,
0:07.3	the polar bears suffering, fishing are eating microplastics,
0:12.3	all these issues is telling us that we got to start to think holistically,
0:19.0	no longer to say this is animal issue, this is nature, this is human issue. Hi, I'm Elizabeth Novigrut's welcome to Species Unite, the podcast where we talk to people who are fighting
0:40.2	one of the hardest fights on earth to stop the unnecessary suffering of animals.
0:45.8	Today's conversation is with Pay Sioux.
0:48.5	Pay is the executive director and co-founder of Act Asia, an organization that's dedicated to humane
0:54.8	education in China. And Pei is seriously a pioneer. She was part of Taiwan's first
1:01.1	animal rights organization ever.
1:03.5	It started in the early 90s and it still exists today.
1:07.2	Since then, she's been what she calls putting out fires
1:10.9	in the animal rights world for decades until 2011 when she decided that the only
1:17.8	way to create real change for animals in China was through education and
1:22.3	through the children.
1:24.0	I grew up in Taiwan when I grew up I never had pets. I remember we when I
1:39.2	when I was about about three or four we used to have a kitten and I remember the kitten was always
1:45.3	under our bed. I never really pay attention to kitten and I just know they're such a nuisance because they pee and poo poo poo down under the bed and it was really smelly.
2:00.0	When I was 17, my mother passed away and I was very sad. So one of my sister's friends recommend us to have a dog.
2:15.0	And we were so totally unsuitable to have that dog
2:21.0	because all my brother and my three sister they're all working and
2:28.8	study at night and I studied a day and I had a night time
	...

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