Reminds me of the scene in A Christmas Story when the family is forced to eat out due to the loss of their turkey and at the Chinese restaurant the goose is served with the head still on it and the Father is all “I can’t eat that…its staring at me!”, and the waiter promptly chops the head off at the table, evoking a gasp from Mom. Good times.
You guys realize you are characterizing and judging a country and culture 4 times the size of yours based on the actions of a few individuals, right?
You can’t possibly think that because one chef in one restaurant somewhere fries and serves live fish that every household in China is doing it. You can’t possibly think that because you saw a video on YouTube of questionable provenance (as could be said of almost everything on YouTube) of one guy biting the head off of a live snake and eating it you think normal everyday people in China just go walking down the street munching on live snakes?!
I’ve seen plenty of videos and news stories of Americans doing all kinds of unconscionable shit to animals and yet I don’t just assume that everyone in America is involved in dogfighting, leaving their pets at home to starve, forcing metal objects down their pet’s throats, cat hoarding, and all other kinds of stupid, intentionally cruel things.
Please learn some perspective, and the next time you take out your broad brush, turn it on yourself first.
Oysters are eaten alive.
That video (or the 10 seconds I watched before closing it), was frankly disgusting though. That’s torturing an animal for fun, which is beyond the pale - if that’s representative of a culture, that culture has deep problems. I still kinda doubt it’s widespread, though.
I agree with all of the people that say you guys are waaaay overgeneralizing. Let me remind you of a few things:
- This is in the news. And the news alwyas cherry-picks the exciting or shocking stories. I am sick unto death of all of the stories that come out of India of some village girl marrying a dog. India has made an enormous amount of progress since Independence but the stories are always about how backwards they are, or sometimes, how the nice Christians are helping them into the First World.
- As HazelNut and others say, there really aren’t a lot of people who eat dog. I believe dog might be served in Hong Kong; and Korea. My SO’s dad ate dog once a long time ago. They don’t have respect for every dog the way the Westerners do…but they certainly have pet dogs. They are NOT chasing down dogs in the street and eating all of them.
- Stop eating cows and get back to me.
I couldn’t eat a dog…but I was raised in the States, and have too much cultural baggage.
I remember reading that they do not die instantly, and feel about as much pain as you or I would under the circumstances. Sorry I can’t offer you a cite- I never remember my sources :(.
Rabbis say fish do not feel pain, so they need not be killed by a Kosher butcher for whatever that is worth.
I can second this. When I first went to Korea (1995?) I had a short job at a school in a small town on the southern coast (Yosu). The first night, the owner of the school took us out for dinner and ordered “Boshintang”, which, we were informed as it was being served, was dog soup. IE: Let’s see if we can shock the newbie foreigners!!
We 'Mericans shrugged it off and dug in.
The soup was actually very good, but the dog meat a bit more fatty than I would have liked. Don’t tell my dog this story… there are just some things he doesn’t need to know.
I was in Korea teaching for another 9 years or so, and the topic of eating dog came up often (as Koreans tend to be rather sensitive about their image overseas). I don’t recall ever having a student in any of my classes who had tried dog meat, although one student told me he had a puppy when he was a kid… his uncle ate it. 
FWIW, I did find Chinese attitudes towards animals…difficult. I saw dogs being beaten to death in a sack with sticks. I saw my students come up with puppies that they somehow planned to raise in their 8 person no-pets-allowed dorm rooms. Obviously these puppies were never around long, and I never asked where they went. Live fish and eels are definitely found on the dinner table from time to time. What you’d see from the rabbits, fish, ducks, and other animals being sold for meat at the fresh market was heartbreaking.
I think it comes from a very different attitude about nature. Despite all of our “oohhhhh the East is so in touch with nature,” it’s not really true. What I saw in China was the attitude that nature exists to serve humans, and it’s humans right and even duty to take it for all it is worth. Nature is a product that is useless if it is not controlled and exploited Indeed, there seems to be a bit of drive to leave an imprint on as much of nature as possible- rivers will be dammed, mountains leveled, and even scenic vistas are often focused around a rock bearing a word or snippet of poetry- something human. There is a touch of manifest destiny about it.
Of course, this is just my observation based on limited experience.
Cruelty to animals used to be much more common in the west. Europeans enthusiastically watched bull fighting, bear beating, fox tossing, dogfighting and generally any activity involving animals being tortured by each other or by people. But at some point these attitudes disappeared. I don’t know exactly when or why it happened.
I’m under no illusions that “the East” or “the West” have any innate characteristics when it comes to their attitudes about animals (or about anything, really.) But there’s no denying that, for whatever reasons, social attitudes took hold in Europe and America that animals were not to be harmed for amusement. This doesn’t seem to have happened in Asia.
It’s happening in Asia - it’s a process. Animal rights take a second seat to human rights, and many parts of Asia are still just progressing from “developing” to “developed.” It’s only been a few decades since Korea has managed to set up a truly democratic government.
Last summer there was this incident where a girl kicked a cat nearly to death and then flung it out of a window. The general reaction was horror and disgust, whereas I’m sure 20-30 years ago it would have been mostly indifference. So it’s not like the country is unaware of the idea that animals shouldn’t be abused. I’m sure in a few decades, laws will be passed that ban the current production methods for dog stew as well.
And by the way, bull fighting and fox hunting are still actively practiced in parts of Europe, so saying those attitudes have “disappeared” is a stretch.
even sven you have mirrored my experience and impressions perfectly.
I once spat in a guy’s face when he approached me in the street and tried to sell me a tiger paw. I’m sure he had no idea why I did this, and thought I was just some crazy lowai.
On my last trip I did see signs of some pressure groups just starting, particularly around bear bile farms, but they are tiny and the problem enormous.
Treating animals nicely is frequently a byproduct of affluence. Unfortunately, you could make similar arguments about treating humans nicely. It’s easy to be nice when your belly is full and your family is safe. Get hungry enough and Fido might start looking pretty tasty. Hell, get hungry enough and your buddy Steve might start looking surprisingly edible. And it’s worth pointing out that dog fighting, cock fighting, and bull fighting haven’t completely disappeared from Western society.
Of course there are plenty of differing cultural and philosophical viewpoints on these issues. Jains have abhorred the killing of any animal for centuries. They probably wouldn’t see much difference between killing a salamander for a key chain and killing a cow for a leather jacket.
I’m with Hazelnut on this one. I think people are arbitrarily declaring this “THE CRUELEST THING EVAHZ” (I’m being hyperbolic) because it seems strange and foreign to a Western audience. These people are also irrationally dismissing how animals are killed to serve their own interest. Even if you don’t eat meat, animals still end up indirectly dieing for you. When harvesting a field of crops, all sorts of field mice and snakes and other small animals get killed in the process. And that’s not including all the insects and other pests intentionally killed by farmers to protect their crops.
I’ll be saving my outrage at China for how its government treats people, not some weird fad where people kill animals as a fashion accessory.
Why can’t you be outraged at both?
Thousands of people are going to buy their children pet rabbits for Easter next week. Doesn’t stop other Americans (or, hell, perhaps even the same ones) from enjoying a nice rabbit stew.
American kids raise pet sheep, lambs, chickens, calves and pigs for 4H, too, although the winners of the fairs are purchased by strangers and it’s probably best not to ask what happens after that. 
Koreans aren’t the only people who eat the same species they keep as pets. I’d be very surprised if, in general, they ate the same *individuals *they keep as pets, just as I suspect, for the most part, that Fluffybutt the Easter Bunny is safe from the stewpot.
Eyebrows, do you just hate reading my posts? This is the second time you’ve quoted one line from one of my posts then asked a question that indicated you hadn’t bothered to read the rest of it.
I can’t be outraged at both because I’m not outraged by the key chain thing. I don’t see it as particularly worse than how animals are treated by mainstream Americans. How is this really any worse than deer hunting? Some people do rely on the meat, and a lot of the meat gets donated to food banks, but Americans primarily hunt dear for sport. They kill deer because they enjoy it. Gunshot and arrow wounds can kill instantly, but they can also kill slowly and painfully.I know some people are against deer hunting, but most people on this board, and in America, aren’t particularly outraged about it.
Everyone I know who hunts eats the deer. They do suffer more at than animals killed by a butcher of course, particularly those killed by bow hunting.
I believe there is a different mind set from killing something to eat and carrying an animal around in a little bag until it dies.
I have no problem with deer hunting. Everyone I know who hunts eats at least part of the deer. I said “rely” because some poor people do supplement their food budget with meat they hunt. But most people who hunt don’t need the meat. They hunt for the entertainment value, and some of them spend big bucks for the enjoyment of killing animals for sport. The people who buy the fish key chains are killing the animal for entertainment. Now, I think this is incredibly stupid, and I wouldn’t classify it as a moral or dignified thing to do. But I’m not particularly outraged by it.
I’m also going to add that the “Asians eat weird food” thing is largely a matter of perspective. The French eat snails and frogs, the Italians eat squid, and if you look back a century or two, Europeans ate all sorts of things, notably lots of different types of birds, that would probably gross out contemporary Westerners.
I’ve heard several times second hand, so hopefully a doper can confirm or refute this, that many East Asians are completely grossed out by yogurt. The idea being, “Ewww! You crazy white folks actually eat milk that’s so rotten it’s chunky?” I imagine that this could be a very regional thing, since I know Mongolians eat a ton of dairy.
Lactose intolerance is much more prevalent in the Asian community. Ditto African, Native American and Mediterranean populations, looks like only us crackers can drink the stuff with regularity.
Attitudes in China (toward food animals) change constantly. In the Ming period, the scholars appealed to the people , not to kill/eat dogs-they were praised as “patriotic” animals.
Of course, living in a land where hman starvation was common (until recently) gives one a different perspective.