It's now even possible to become a professional 'pet fashion designer', according to a list of new professions published by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security.

Your pet can be treated to a shampoo and set, but it will cost up to 160 yuan in many specialist beauty salons. He or she may receive as much adoration as a child - perhaps in lieu of the children that might be here were it not for the one-child policy.

Yet, in a busy street just 15 minutes away from Beijing's US$500 million Olympic Green, the main venue of the 2008 Games, passersby sidestep the weekly disembowelment of dogs without batting an eyelid.

On the fringes of the university district of Haidian is a Korean restaurant that gets through a mongrel a week, according to its Chinese owner. He buys the dogs from a farm in the southeastern Beijing district of Tongzhou. The dead animals are brought to the restaurant whole, then the staff burn off the fur and hack them to pieces on the pavement before stewing and serving them up.

'You should come in and try it one evening,' says the owner. 'The Chinese love it.'

It's one of the great paradoxes of China: the love and reverence for something on the symbolic level (the 12 animals that give their names to each year, for example, such as the monkey) and the stunning cruelty towards the actual creatures (eating monkey brains while the animals are still alive).

Beijing is shouting about Chinese culture from its rooftops in a bid to lure Olympic investment and tourists. But there are some aspects of this culture that must be stamped out if the city is to avoid shame in the eyes of the world. They include spitting - which has steadily increased since the end of the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak - and the strewing of rubbish in the city's streets and open areas.

It's 2006: there are barely two years to go. The stadiums are going up and the street signs are being repainted. But it will all count for little if practices such as public animal evisceration are allowed to continue.