深圳 notes 4: the dog meat debate, too cute to eat?

Hello again. In our next series in my reflection of my recent trip to China, I would like to talk about an issue which sparked a lot of debate on social media which ended up with me actually blocking one friend not because she was racist per se, but I realized I didn't have the time, energy or inclination to befriend someone who was so autistic. I have enough autism within my own family, I don't get to choose who my family members are but I do get to choose who my friends are. So let me tell you about the the story that she pasted on her Facebook wall and explain how it went down. My ex-friend Maya (who admits to being autistic and having Asperger's Syndrome) posted a link on Facebook about the Yulin dog meat festival in China, condemning it to be brutal and barbaric - but she also left the door open for anyone to try to explain why anyone could eat a dog. So I responded and offered the following points to explain why the eating of dog meat is practiced in not just China, but also in various parts of the world like Korea, Nigeria, Mexico, Ghana and Vietnam.

In China, the country has suffered many episodes of extreme famine and the deaths of tens of millions due to starvation. Just within the short period of the Great Leap Forward from 1958 to 1962 when Mao implemented reforms that failed disastrously, up to 55 million died (it is hard to obtain accurate information on the true death toll as the Maoist government wanted to conceal the facts about Mao's terrible failures, we are merely going on the estimates made by the academic experts). Of these 55 million death, some were executed for the state, but most just starved to death due to the poor harvests. When people were extremely malnourished and weak, they became susceptible to all kinds of illnesses and it was estimated that 5% of the Chinese population died as a direct result of the famine, but most the surviving population suffered terribly as well. There have been many episodes of famine recorded in China in history and the one during Mao's Great Leap Forward stands out because it is the most recent one on that scale, but take for example the Great Northern Famine of China in 1867 to 1879 which was caused by drought - it was estimated that between 35 to 40% of the population of Shanxi starved to death. It was during periods like that when people ate dogs because the dogs were there, it was purely a necessity when food was so scarce, when people were very malnourished and desperate to put food on the table. Certainly, the eating dog during times of famine is not restricted to China, indeed in Germany for example, dog meat was regularly consumed during times of crisis when other kinds of meat became just too expensive. 

The last episode of mass famine was in the period of 1966 - 1976, which was during Mao's cultural revolution when up to another 10 million died. Just because the death toll was lower doesn't mean that the vast majority of the Chinese population didn't suffer - many were on the poverty line, barely clinging on to survival, living on meager rations and the quality of their lives was downright miserable in that period. Nonetheless, China has emerged as one of the world's most robust economies in this century and certainly in 2018, the new middle class in China who enjoy a standard of living on par with the USA is over 300 million - that number is increasingly rapidly as China's economy continues to boom and could reach 400 million as soon as 2020 according to some optimistic estimates (coming out of China, of course - this is to be taken with a pinch of salt, a lot of that depends on where you put the benchmark) but no one can deny the might of the incredible Chinese economic miracle of today. So certainly today, most Chinese people can afford to eat so well that obesity is becoming a big problem in China. Good Chinese food usually features the finest cuts of beef, pork, prawns, scallops, fish, chicken and if you want to push the boat out and impress your guests, you'll bring out the abalone, caviar, lobster and venison. So why would people still want to eat dog meat in 2018, a kind of meat that is generally associated with times of famine, of desperation and extreme poverty? Why do Chinese people today still want to eat dog meat then?

Most people in the West have a taboo about eating dogs because dogs are perceived to be too cute and lovable to eat, they fall into the category of cuddly pets, as man's best friend. However, such status is not afforded to animals like pigs, chickens and cows which regularly end up on the dinner table in the West and yes, often fed to the pet dogs in the West too. What we put into the categories of 'pets' and 'food' varies from culture to culture - the best example of this was during the horse meat scandal of 2013 when it was uncovered that many food products sold in the UK and Ireland which were supposed to contain pork or beef were actually made from horse meat. Now whilst there was no real health risk involved, it did involve a certain element of fraud because the food was clearly mislabeled and sold on false pretenses. Horse meat is regularly consumed in continental Europe, Latin America, Japan and central Asia and there's no taboo about eating horses at all - it is often considered a delicacy but in the English speaking world, horses are considered beautiful pets too cute to slaughter for food. That was why the scandal made the headlines in 2013 because most people were appalled at the thought that they had accidentally eaten horse meat, something they would never do as a matter of principle because they consider horses as pets, not food. Yet all you have to do is cross over the English channel to France, there you will easily find horse meat products sold even in supermarkets and plenty of horse meat on the menu.

Staying with the French-English divide, snails are considered at best a pest in English gardens, but in France they are considered a delicacy and getting half a dozen escargots in garlic butter is quite a treat in any French restaurant. In fact the French do not disguise the fact that you're eating snails - they go as far as to present the snail in the shell on the dinner table, so you know you are eating a real snail and not some kind of clam they are trying to pass off as snails. When you buy escargot in a French supermarket, it is usually sold in tins but when you buy the tin of escargot, you are usually still offered the shells separately, so you can still give your diners the authentic experience of picking the snail flesh out of the shell with a toothpick at the dining table. I've had escargot before many times in France and quite frankly, I think it is over-rated - I am not squeamish about the fact that I am eating a garden snail but the taste isn't that special. The texture resembles a clam or a sea conch but you mostly taste the garlic butter and parsley it is served with. I suppose it is the kind of thing you might eat if you are in Paris and wanted to post something on Instagram with the right hashtags, but really I wouldn't bother. Nonetheless, you'll be amazed how many British people would never ever dare to eat snail meat simply because of the social taboo in their culture about eating something they consider yucky and slimy.

Having traveled through many countries around the world, I have learnt to stop judging others by my own standards. Yes I do have my own standards about where I would draw the line about what I would be glad to consider food, but I also think it is hypocritical to start judging others if they choose to consider something like horse, snail or dog as food - after all, I'll gladly eat more common meats like chicken, duck, beef, fish, prawn and pork, so it really boils down to what one considers 'too cute to eat' in their culture. I suppose the only people who can accuse dog meat eaters as cruel are the vegans who do not touch any kind of meat or animal-related product and my ex-friend Maya most certainly wasn't vegan: she gladly consumed the more ordinary kinds of meats like pork, beef and chicken. So why was she so judgmental about other cultures having other standards about what they were willing to consider food then? Why was she imposing her own cultural standards on Chinese people who do not have any qualms about considering dog meat as food for the dinner table? If she was happy to consume bacon, then what would she say if I turned around and called her a hypocrite if I happened to consider pigs too cute to kill for food then? Some of you might remember the 1995 movie Babe which featured a pig as the lead, an orphaned piglet trying to prove his worth on the farm to avoid becoming ham. Certainly that movie made many people think that pigs can indeed be cute - but too cute to become ham and bacon? I wonder how many people actually stopped eating pork after watching that movie? Why not watch the trailer of the film Babe below?

Chinese people crossed that threshold about considering dogs as food a long time ago, when starvation and desperation forced them to eat dogs during famines. Once you have crossed that threshold, you stop feeling squeamish about seeing dog on the menu or the thought of others choosing to eat dog as food because you just put them in the same category as cows, pigs, prawns and chickens - it is just meat and how is meat from a dog different from say meat from a cow or pig? But attitudes can change: indeed in neighbouring Hong Kong and Taiwan, the slaughtering of dogs and the sale of dog meat is totally banned. You won't be able to find dog meat there despite it being still being prevalent in China. Furthermore the consumption of dog meat in China has indeed fallen in recent years, In 2014, dog meat sales in China decreased by a third compared to 2013. Much of this can be attributed to the fact that the older generation who have lived through much harder times are far less squeamish about eating dog meat, whilst the young people in China today had been brought up on a far more Westernized diet featuring hamburgers, ice cream, cappuccinos, pizzas, steaks and fried chicken. Thus tastes and attitudes in China are changing rapidly as China modernizes and catches up with the rest of the world and within a few decades, dog meat might become actually quite rare in China as pet ownership of dogs increases with the Chinese middle classes and soon, they will consider dogs too cute to eat, just like in the West. Eating dog meat then would be considered something only the poor and the uncultured, uncivilized folks in the countryside do.

But if I may play the devil's advocate for a moment, perhaps dog meat is here to stay in China, for the very same reason why horse meat is still extremely common in Europe despite the fact that Europeans are rich enough to afford other kinds of meat today. It is an acquired taste and once it has become part of your culinary tradition, some sections of society would have acquired a taste for it the same way every country will have a taste for something pretty darn weird that outsiders will find absolutely disgusting. Whenever I am in the Nordic countries, I often see this candy known as Salmiakki/Salmiak - it is a particularly foul tasting kind of salty licorice made with ammonium chloride which is said to prodce a stinging painful reaction on the tongue. I have gone as far as trying it in Sweden and my Swedish Airbnb host was rolling on the ground with laughter as she saw me wince in total agony. "It is okay, you can spit it out, please. I won't be offended," she said but I was determined to have the full experience of it as part of embracing all things Swedish on that trip. I was like, "you have plenty of cheap, white sugar available in Sweden today, people only creating this kind of salty licorice back in the days when sugar was rare and expensive - so why don't Swedish people eat regular candy made with sugar like the rest of the world today?" The answer? It is an acquired taste, people have grown to like it over the years. I doubt you will find Super Salmiakki in a supermarket outside the Nordic countries anytime soon, but it is certainly here to stay in the markets where there are plenty of fans of it. The same could certainly happen with dog meat.

Furthermore, eating dog meat in China today can be seen as a sign of defiance, as a symbolic gesture of survival during very hard times. Rather than starving to death, our ancestors chose to eat dog meat and so we celebrate their sheer determination to stay alive today by embracing what they did rather than feel shame about it. We can't change history, we can't change the fact that Chinese people have been eating dog meat for centuries, so we may as well come to terms with it and understand why it happened. Having said that, dog meat isn't that common in China, though I did see it on the menu in a restaurant that I did go to in Shenzhen. However, as we had some foreign guests with us in the group, our hosts decided to stick with the more traditional meats like duck, prawns, beef, clams and fish. Thankfully the menu was only available in Chinese and I didn't even mention to my white friends that dog meat was on the menu - I guess I felt this collective responsibility to represent Chinese culture in the best possible light and not make them freak out over the fact that people at the next table might be dining on dog meat, that the same wok used to cook the fried noodles was probably used to cook some dog meat earlier in the evening. Most of all, I wanted to get along well with our Chinese hosts. I knew they certainly wanted to impress the white guests and so I decided to keep quiet about the dog meat there.

As for my ex-friend Maya, well I did present these points to her but no, she wasn't in the mood to discuss - she went out of her way to condemn Chinese culture for being barbaric for considering dog as food and when I tried to explain to her why it happens, she accused me of being in favour of eating dog. And I was like, woah - you can ask me why Hitler killed so many Jews and if I were to give you an account of the Holocaust, would you accuse me of being anti-Semitic, of being a Jew hater just because I have knowledge of what happened in WW2? I told her that she wasn't interested in finding any answers, she just wanted to make an online rant about how barbaric Chinese culture was and that autistic people like her are incapable of listening to the opinions of others, even if they want to shout their opinions from the rooftops (or in this case, on social media). She then launched a stinging personal attack on me about how I was prejudiced against autistic people, that I was using her autism against her and that I felt no compassion on the issue of animal cruelty. I'm like, since when did I condone the slaughter of dogs for food in China? I'm merely explaining what happened through the centuries of Chinese history, the same way an academic historian would explore the same issue. At which point I thought, with friends like Maya, who needs enemies? I don't even like her, we were only friends because we have a mutual friend who introduced us to each other. So I then blocked her and explained to our mutual friend what happened.

So that's it from me on this issue - I know it is a wider discussion about the issue of dog meat in China rather than an anecdote directly relating to my experiences during this trip. But after the heated exchange I had with her on social media, it is nice to have this forum to present the issue in a logical manner without prejudice. What do you think? Would you eat dog meat if you were in China and say you stumbled upon it in a buffet? Would you be too squeamish to try it or would you just see it as any other kind of meat like beef or pork? How do you feel about people who have taboos about certain kinds of meats but would still gladly eat a hamburger and bacon? Should the sale of dog meat be banned and for what reasons? Leave a comment below, please let me know your thoughts on the issue and many thanks for reading.