It said in the newspapers a while back that a group of children from Taipei went on a class trip to the zoo and when they passed by the Chinese oxen, some of them actually called them water buffalos! Has it come to that then? We've shared life's ups and downs with the Chinese people for 4,000 years, and now kids don't even recognize us--it's enough to make a grown buffalo cry.

My ancestors came to China from India as far back as 2,000 B.C., and we've lived here generation after generation ever since, becoming mankind's faithful servants, plodding through muddy rice paddies with them, waiting together for the golden tassels to ripen in the sun.

When people from Kwangtung and Fukien provinces crossed the sea to open up the wilderness in Taiwan, we came right along with them. There was a drought in southern Fukien during the Ch'ung-chen era (1628 to 1644) of the Ming dynasty, and the government announced a Three Person, One Buffalo policy. Anyone who emigrated to Taiwan to open up new land was given three taels of silver, and every three of them received a water buffalo. That's no bull either: it's written up in A Comprehensive History of Taiwan.

With mixed marriages pretty common in the animal world these days, we're one of the few groups that sticks to our own kind. Yellow oxen, dairy cattle and beef cattle can moo all they want about how the world is one big family and have as many half-breed offspring as they like, but we marry within the clan.

Too conservative, you say? Not true. It's a matter of necessity, actually, not choice.

The crux lies in our chromosomes. Most bovine species have 30 pairs of chromosomes, but water buffalos have 24 or 25.

Water buffalos the world over come in two types: swamp and river varieties. The swamp variety, with 24 pairs of chromosomes, is the "coolie" among draft animals, and that's the type we Taiwan water buffalos belong to. The river variety, which has 25 pairs of chromosomes, can give milk as well as work in the fields. Even though they have different numbers of chromosomes, the two varieties have similar personalities and can intermarry and have babies if they want.

Besides our physiological characteristics, another reason we aren't mixed and matched with all and sundry is grounded in mankind's feelings for us. Dr. Sung Yung-yi, a professor of animal husbandry at National Taiwan University explains that "water buffalos were brought over from the mainland by our forebears and have toiled away in the fields with farmers for years and years, so the feeling is that they're almost part of the family." Other domestic animals are raised simply for the dinner table and are crossbred constantly.

Actually, back in 1959 the government saw that our utility was gradually declining because of the spread of mechanical tillers, and it brought in some Southeast Asian murrah water buffaloes, which yield a lot of milk, for us to breed with, hoping to give us a new job skill. But it turned out that farmers didn't like the twisty-horned little calves that resulted, and the murrah wives, rejected by their in-laws, quietly packed up and left. That was the only time any of us Taiwan water buffaloes married outside the clan.

I said before that children don't recognize us any more, but actually it's easy to tell us apart from other cattle. Shih I-chang, the head of the Hualien Animal Breeding and Propagation Station, describes us this way: "Water buffalos are black or dark brown in color, with a crescent of white under the throat and the neck, a little like that of the Taiwan black bear, and have a pair of large, parallel, sweptback horns, which are really very elegant." We also have soft kneecaps and heels and large cloven hooves that don't get hurt easily and keep us from getting stuck in the mud.

We're not picky eaters by any means. We can digest any kind of fodder no matter how rough or poor in quality it is thanks to the microorganisms in our "iron stomachs." We also have a habit of diving our head underwater to snatch up a mouthful of water plants.

Our fur is sparse and thin, and our pores are just one sixth the size of a Chinese ox's. Our dark-blue skin absorbs heat quickly but dissipates it slowly. According to reason, we shouldn't be very suited for a tropical climate, but a buffalo has to go where it's told, I suppose. To adjust our body temperature, we like to soak in the water a lot. Shih I-chang loves to watch the way we slip into the water, shaking our ears and wagging our tails with happiness.

Besides cooling us off, mud baths also get rid of parasites and prevent insect bites. After we've finished bathing, a mud coating forms on our bodies that cakes in the sunlight and drops off piece by piece, taking the lice and vermin with it.

People sometimes use the expression "dumb as an ox," but actually we're not dumb at all. We know our way around as well as horses. People who have grown up in the country must have seen us hauling the crops home in the evening, along with a sleeping farmer on top.

We've been on Taiwan for more than 300 years, and a history of water buffalos could practically serve as a history of agricultural development. As many as 330,000 of us were once carefully cared for on the island. Many older farmers don't eat beef out of gratitude and respect for us, and some water buffalos have even had tombstones erected over their graves.

Ever since the 1960s, though, we've been almost completely replaced by mechanical tillers, and there are just 20,000 or so of us left.

Now that we've lost our jobs in the field, our place of usefulness has switched to the meat locker. No one ever complained about us before, when our strength was what counted, but now that flavor is all that matters, they usually slap a grade of "choice" on us. Even though being slaughtered for the dinner table isn't exactly my number-one carcer choice, I still want to stick up for our reputation and proclaim to anyone who cares that in flavor we're not one whit inferior to imported beef.

"To maintain an adequate supply of them for tilling," Mr. Shih once said, "every water buffalo used to have an ID sticker on it with its photo and birth date, and butchers were prohibited from slaughtering any buffalo that was under the age of 13."

Just think of that! A two-year-old buffalo is sexually mature, and a 13-year-old is the equivalent of a person in their sixties or seventies, at least. Tough old meat like that naturally tastes lousy. Now that those regulations have been lifted, we can give people a taste of our meat the way it's supposed to chance to be, in its prime.

At the Hualien breeding station a while back, they held a meat tasting event where people were given beef and buffalo meat without being told which was which. Most people simply couldn't tell.

According to the Taiwan Province Department of Agriculture and Forestry, Taiwan imports more than 67,000 metric tons of foreign beef each year--the equivalent of 480 thousand whole heads of cattle, or more than 20 times our entire population. Alas! If we want to extend our glorious history on Taiwan, we water buffalos will have to toot our own horns and hope that, despite their infatuation with imported beef, people won't forget to love us once more.

[Picture Caption]

A herd of oxen graze as egrets take wing. Tranquil bucolic scenes like this are rarely seen now that paddies are cultivated by mechanical tillers, or "iron oxen."

A mud bath beats the heat and drives away insects. What a feeling!

A mud bath beats the heat and drives away insects. What a feeling!