Tuesday, June 24, 2014

No Dogs Allowed in the Culture Club

So the old custom of eating dog is running into problems with the city-dwelling Chinese equivalent of SWPLs. Emulating the culinary habits of admired foreigners does have a long tradition in most places, although I'll note that as much as your average American NPR listener may reflexively leg-hump anything European like a love-starved Cocker Spaniel, you never see them calling for Secretariat and California Chrome on the menu at Maison d'Locavore.

Somewhere there's a remote mountain village where cows are beloved family pets and the people think I'm a monster.
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28 comments:

Robert said...

Oh, I'm sure you could find a PETA branch somewhere close by that thinks you're a monster. No need to go trekking off into the wilderness. ;)

Tam said...

Of course, but that's not as funny a mental picture. ;)

staghounds said...

Or India.

TCinVA said...

People seem to forget that in most of our lifetimes the biggest problem China had was ***mass starvation*** thanks to Chairman Mao's political theories on crop growth and central planning.

Protein was scarce and expensive...and to lots of Chinese today it still is. In the baddest of the days of famine they would even resort to cannibalism.

It's curious how the very well fed who have no fear or memory of lacking the basic necessities of life are the ones who are always up in arms about what other people eat.

Boat Guy said...

I note the festival is honoring "dog meat and lychee"
WHERE oh WHERE are the lychee advocates? The world wants to know...

Leatherwing said...

Here you go, you monster:
http://www.bavaria.us/data/mediadb/cms_pictures/%7B26ac9975-7285-a566-1309-851dc8d4fa6d%7D.jpeg

PhilaBOR said...

SYPL?

pacman1776 said...

read lewis and clarks journal of their expiditon. on the trip down the columbia when they couldnt buy fish from the indians they bought dog. the journal notes some of the men became very fond of dogmeat.

LCB said...

My brother-in-law was on a missionary trip to Indonesia (building schools) in the late 70's. His team was invited to a feast up in the mountains. When he commented that the main course was good and asked what it was, his host said, "That dog you were petting when you got here."

Nothing he could do be smile and keep eating. :-)

Matt said...

I would rather eat the dog than the lychee. In my times spent with other people and cultures, foreign and domestic, I learned not to ask what the food was if I could not identify it. I also learned to smile, nod and chew. I do recall a few items that were truly disgusting in taste and texture that I am glad I didn't know what I had consumed.

NAVIGATOR said...

TRY NOT TO HAVE A SOCIAL RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR FOOD IT TASTES BETTER THAT WAY
ALSO "TO SERVE HUMANITY" EPISODE OF THE TWILIGHT ZONE COMES TO MIND
BONE APITTOTTO!

LCB said...

I like horses as much as most people, and I love me little dog. But I can't think of any meat I wouldn't eat, except maybe cat. I'm allergic to cats. :-)

Drang said...

So, I had a bet with myself about how many comments before someone mentioned India. I thought "3"...

Anyway. Korea officially banned eating dog meat in the run-up to the '88 Olympics, but you would still see restaurants in the country flying the red banners indicating that the puppy was fresh. By the time I left the last time, a cultural backlash had gotten the law repealed; one enterprising restaurateur in the vicinity of Yongsan Garrison (8th Army HQ) had a sign in several languages extolling the virtues of his "Dog Meet Boiled!"
(Never tried it. And, honestly, one of the great regrets of my Army career is that I wasn't walking around with a pocket camera that last tour...)

Anonymous said...

King Rat is a memorable book. Tastes just like dog.

RKN said...

Dinner guest remarks, "My, Doris, this fondue is delicious." Other guests nod affirmatively. And then, "By the way, Doris, I haven't seen your cat this evening?"

Steve C said...

One of the things you learn on the farm is that pets can be delicious.

Stuart the Viking said...

When I was growing up, my father was a coal miner with all the crap that brings (strikes, contract negotiation, walk-outs etc). Sometimes he was out of work for months at a time. How my father fed the family was by keeping a small farm where we lived. Just a couple of acres. We ate what we grew.

We learned early not to name the food animals.

Sure, that calf is cute now and giving him a cute name seems fun, but in a year or so when "Bumbles" the cow is off to get butchered, crying about it is just going to tick-off the old man and probably earn a beating.

s

Sherm said...

Lewis and Clark actually preferred dog to fish. They didn't just eat it when they couldn't get fish they ate dog when they could get fish. I understand the natives near them when they wintered at Fort Clatsup thought them very odd for preferring dog to salmon near what was arguably the greatest salmon fishery in the world.

Kristophr said...

Off topic:

If I had 130k to spend on cars ... I want this. Milage sucks though ...

http://ericpetersautos.com/2014/06/24/2014-mercedes-s550/

( yes, and anarcho-capitalist car reviewer! )

Lergnom said...

W.C. Fields (In a restaurant to waitress): "I didn't squawk about the steak, dear. I merely said I didn't see that old horse that used to be tethered outside here."

Matthew said...

I say we drink the wine, eat the dogs, and use the paper for musket wadding.

Matt said...

You know the meat is fresh when you can still see the marks where the jockey was hitting it with the crop.

Cincinnatus said...

Hmmm, never been leg-humped by a cocker spaniel myself.

My mom's chihuahuas however have attempted it ... and I'm checking out suitably sized stewpots on Amazon ...

Old NFO said...

Anybody that's traveled to the Far East has had both dog and cat... If they've been in europe, they've had horse... whether they knew it or not... Monkey isn't bad either! ;-)

John A said...

I am not sure which book I am going to paraphrase here -

The Police Commissioner looked down into the park and smiled at the children playing with their dogs. He remembered that as a poor child, he would have loved to have a dog. Or a cat. Or ANY meat.

LabRat said...

For background, one of my dogs' name is Kang.

So I didn't know whether to laugh my ass off or cringe when I learned that in i-Kiribati, the language of a tiny island in the Pacific whose main meat is dog, "kang-kang" means "tasty!"

Chase said...

I'm pretty sure there's an enormous nation of about a billion people, a large portion of whom think cows are beloved family pets. S'okay though.

Tam said...

As best I can tell, Chase, the cows there are not viewed quite the way companion animals are.

I mean there's something of a difference, at least from where I sit, between allowing something to roam free unhindered because of spiritual/cultural reasons, and cuddling with something and talking baby talk to it.