# Cannibals prefer Chinese take-away? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 28, 2005, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibals-prefer-chinese-take-away/333052 "2005-11-28T14:43:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![milquetoast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@milquetoast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/milquetoast)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2005, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibals-prefer-chinese-take-away/333052/21 "2005-11-28T19:48:29Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > But if they put a Chinese person in the lead, wouldn’t they run a risk of becoming disoriented? I think you got that backwards. They would become oriented (or disoccidented, if you will). ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2005, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibals-prefer-chinese-take-away/333052/22 "2005-11-28T20:52:45Z")
> [@Rune](#): > > Danes are a revolting people. They have a snack which you can buy in all small shops and food stores, which is dried or grilled pigs skin. It’s eaten like other sane people would candy, chips or peanuts. The taste comes from when the pig is about to be slaughtered and it is scared shitless and it sweats like a, like a rapist (to keep to the Australian touch – when I was in Australia, a sports commentator had to face some very harsh words for having made this comment on air about a player during a rugby match. “That mr. Jones, he’s sweating like a rapist not”. Australians are pretty revolting too). The pigs sweat permeates the pigskin and gives it the flavour the Danes think so highly of. Perhaps the Chinese scared less easily that Europeans. Or at least sweat less, so the skin would be nice and crisp but without the nasty European salty taste. You always also hear Chinese thinks Europeans stink because they sweat so much. Isn’t this the same thing as pork rinds, which are commonly available as a snack in the US, and which George H.W. Bush was said to be a fan of? I think they were also popular recently during the low-carb craze as an alternative to potato chips and other carb-heavy snacks. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2005, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibals-prefer-chinese-take-away/333052/23 "2005-11-28T21:25:10Z")
I think pork rinds are deep-fried, not dried or grilled. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2005, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibals-prefer-chinese-take-away/333052/24 "2005-11-28T21:43:32Z")
> [@Rune](#): > > When European gold diggers in Australia went into the jungle they would take a chinaman to walk in the lead and another one at the end. That way, when the cannibals attacked they would snatch up the Chinese and leave the Europeans alone. The cannibals favoured Chinese meat as it was less salty and they could keep them fresh longer by hanging them up in the trees by their long hair. > > True or false? Anything to it? Like most good rural legends there’s a grain of truth mixed with a load of crap to make a good story. This particular story was widely popularised in the 20th century by Ion Idriess. Idriess was a good storyteller but his actual research left a little to be desired, far to often he picked up on local legends and reported them as facts. So, although he never actually lied AFAIK, anything he said should be taken with a grain of salt. There seems to be little doubt that NQ Aborigines practiced cannibalism, and there seems to be little doubt that they captured many Chinese. But the practice was never widespread enough to warrant such a practice. Perhaps more importantly it was never so lawless that people could be captured in plain view of witnesses without resulting in major military operations against the offenders. Moreover if a party of armed miners, and they were all armed, saw someone being carried struggling into the jungle why would they allow them to be carried off without returning fire? It simply makes no sense even if we assume they placed no value on Chinese life. A cannibal is a constant risk to everyone’s life. As a result any raiding party looking for human captives would be forced to kill or attempt to kill all travellers, not just the intended lunch. As for whether Chinese tasted less salty, it’s equally hard to tell. It’s a widely repeated myth, but it lacks credibility for a number of reasons. One of those reasons has already been given: human salt content is regulated within very tight bounds by the kidneys so diet doesn’t have any noticeable effect. Moreover salty flesh is normally relished by most people in the world. It’s hard to see how the slightly enhanced salty flavour could be considered a fault. Other versions of the legend sya that it was the Chinese diet that gave the meat a better flavour. That is certainly plausible since the flavour of non-ruminant species like humans is heavily influenced by diet. The other reason to be dubious is that Aborigines were almost certainly scapegoats. There was a lot of bad blood between Chinese and Caucasian diggers in the NQ goldfields which led to several running battles. Caucasians murdered Chinese and I suspect Chinese murdered Caucasians. Under those circumstances claims that any missing Chinese had been taken by Aborigines because Aborigines preferred the taste of Chinese flesh are hardly plausible. It just seems too convenient a story under the circumstances to accept without questioning. Of course there were also frequent violent clashes with Aborigines as well, sot the idea of using them as scapegoats held probably double appeal. Added to that the Aborigines in question probably had a good reason to allay the fears of Caucasians by saying that they preferred Chinese anyway. In short there are too many reasons for everyone involved to lie to give much credence to any accounts. In the final analysis it’s hard to say for sure if there’s any accuracy. It’s dubious for all the reasons given above., but it’s certainly a widely repeated legend. The fact that it’s repeated all around the world and not just restricted to NQ suggests that either it’s universally true or it’s a kind of rural urban legend. > [@Rune](#): > > The taste comes from when the pig is about to be slaughtered and it is scared shitless and it sweats like a, like a rapist I hate to break this to you, but pigs don’t sweat. They have sweat glands in a few tiny areas like the snout and feet and that’s it. The idea that crackling gets a salty flavour form the sweat of the pigs is simply nonsense. It gets the salty flavour from salt added at the factory. > [@Staggerlee](#): > > As for taking a Chinese person with them; it wouldn’t be cost-efficient to feed and water, plus keep watch on the prisoner (I presume the take-up rate for the paid job of Cannibal-decoy-sacrifice would be poor Nobody suggested these were prisoners. As lawless as the NW goldfields were there were still constant troop patrols on the roads. Anyone talking a person prisoner would have very rapidly become a prisoner himself and probably hanged. The general idea was that Chinese would be invited to join a party of travellers and then strategically positioned in the front and rear. > [@Giles](#): > > Places where there were gold rushes in Australia were not jungles. There aren’t any real jungles in Australia, but the gold rushes tended to be in relatively arid and/or temperate regions. There were several Australian gold rushes in places that were jungles, most notably the Palmer River rush. While most of the Palmer River finds were not in jungle themselves they required several week of trekking through jungle to reach the finds. Of course some of the fields themselves were within jungle. There most certainly are ‘real’ jungles in Australia, no matter how you choose to define jungle. Millions of hectares of jungle. > [@](#): > > By the time the gold rushes took place, the Aboriginal population of those areas had been depleted. Once more not even remotely true. The Palmer River rush took place late in the 19th century. The Aboriginal population was as high as it had been for the past 10, 00 years. > [@](#): > > Even if there was a significant Aboriginal population, it would be more cost-effective to use guns to defend against them. I have no idea what this is based on. Can you explain why anything could be more cost effective than free? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2005, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibals-prefer-chinese-take-away/333052/25 "2005-11-28T23:07:27Z")
> [@Rune](#): > > These Australian cannibals also find European whites too salty - they also thinks the chinaman is quite tasty, and apparently less salty - :[Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine](http://www.zoraskingdom.freeserve.co.uk/pervapp3.htm) In case you didn’t get it the first time, “chinaman” is considered an ethnic slur in English, at least of the American variety. Not quite as bad as “nigger”, but on the order of “spick” or “pollak”. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2005, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibals-prefer-chinese-take-away/333052/26 "2005-11-30T01:52:52Z")
Europeans. The other other white meat. 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cannibals-prefer-chinese-take-away/333052.md?page=1)