"This paper addresses two questions pertaining to ethnicity. First, how do ethnic identifications, alliances, and conflicts play out in social worlds hosting ingrained ethnic hostilities? Secondly, how can we theorize the role of non-human agents in human conceptions of ethnicity and constructions of social-symbolic orders? The discussion is based on events related by Noor; a Rohingya man, who works as a jade trader in the border-town of Ruili in China’s Yunnan province, opposite Myanmar’s Shan state. The paper describes Noor’s motivations for fleeing Myanmar, his experience of Buddhist-Muslim conflicts, his work as a jade trader, and his hobby as a fighting cock breeder. The final section discusses how Noor conceptualizes his ethnic identity and position in a wider social-symbolic order hosting antagonistic ethnic Others by making analogies between nonhuman agents and ethnic humans..."