Asia
Originally published on Tue May 15, 2012 3:46 pm
Photo by Louisa Lim / NPR
Xing Wei, who raises pigeons for lucrative races in China, is shown in Beijing with his favorite bird, Ike. He sells Ike's offspring to wealthy buyers for $15,000.
Photo by Geert Vanden Wijngaert / AP
Chinese buyers are driving up the prices of racing pigeons to astronomical levels. One buyer paid $328,000 for a single bird earlier this year. Belgium, however, remains the center of pigeon-breeding. Here, Yi Minna, the chief operating officer at the Pipa pigeon auction house, is shown in Knesselare, Belgium, last year.
Photo by Louisa Lim / NPR
These pigeons belong to Yang Shibo, who breeds them in an enclosed balcony on the 13th floor of a Beijing apartment building. His best bird cost him $1,000; its descendants have earned him $150,000 in prize money.
To the average observer, they look like ordinary pigeons, caged into a balcony in a high-rise Beijing apartment. But make no mistake. These cooing birds, according to breeder Yang Shibo, are like top-of-the-line sports cars.
"These are the Ferraris of the bird world," he says. "They're the most expensive, and the fastest."
The price of racing pigeons is soaring sky-high, pushed up by wealthy Chinese buyers.
It's the latest market to be inflated by the China Effect — or massive demand from China — which has pushed up commodity prices on everything from Australian iron ore to Brazilian soybeans.
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