From a post about life in Taiwan:
Don’t they eat dogs and other odd stuff like snakes?
No. They don’t eat dogs.
I think a small fraction of restaurants in Beijing serve dog, but I never encountered one and I never saw dog meat for sale. In Seoul, however, they obviously eat dogs. I saw dog meat for sale in a traditional market. The dogs were alive (as many animals are in Asian “wet markets”). I later saw a booklet aimed at visitors to Korea that dismissed dog-eating as some sort of urban legend.
I’m guessing that you don’t read Chinese. There’s a big ethnic Korean population in Beijing and many of the Korean restaurants feature dog meat, and quite a few have names that include something like 大狗肉王 [big dog meat king] (see: https://www.jaxxg.com/images/shiguo.jpg — don’t know if it’s Beijing or not. My Chinese friends would tend to eat it in the summer — I think it might be “cold” which most meats are not, but I might have that wrong — and would love to take me to places where I’d have to eat it. I didn’t have a problem with it.
You probably just have nicer friends than I do.
There’s also a fascinating movie — https://www.answers.com/topic/kala-shi-tiao-gou — about a family’s travails with an illegal dog, that ends up with the dog still not found and the family’s son in jail. It then had a page of text that said that they found the dog, but didn’t say anything about the son’s fate. I’m guessing that that was added after audience previews.
Every time I come there are more and more dogs, so I’m guessing that before *too* long there will be a categorical shift from “animal” to “pet” for these creatures. But China is a fairly tolerant place, so it may not be too quick or categorical.
Thanks, Kevin. I don’t read Chinese, you are right. I knew about those restaurants just barely; I didn’t know they were all Korean. I went to five or six Korean restaurants in Beijing and had food that was a lot different than any Korean food I ever had before — such as mushrooms wrapped in ham and covered with sweet/sour sauce — but no dog.
I was served dog, along with other meat, by my host in Xian in central China; it tasted a bit like beef… And in Shanghai, at a decent restaurant, I was offered snake and turned it down…
Staying on the Beijing U campus I kept noticing all these Pekingese dogs that people had for pets, which I initially regarded as curious, until after about 4 days I realized that I was in Peking and it made sense that people would have Pekingese dogs… Duh — maybe it was the jet lag…
It is pretty clear that they DO eat dogs in Taiwan. Not necessarily a lot, but when you pass a law forbidding it, it tells you something.
BTW anyone know if this is a spoof or not?
https://www.puppybeef.com/index.php
I am a Brit living in Korea. My experience (of 10 months) shows me Koreans do eat dogs. Near my school there are three Restaraunts I know off; my neighbours, who I don’t like, were having Bositang (the Korean name for dog soup) at the weekend. Many of my teachers eat it.
They also know that the dogs are usually tortured first, before they are killed in order to improve the flavour. The leads me to assume Koreans have, generally a low sense of morality – if not then more people would be trying to stop this. My school also keeps four dogs – or rather a staff member who lives on site, does. It is acc eptable, in Korean minds, to keep dogs for food on school ground.
Last week, I saw an old man drag a large pointer type dog, along the road, its back legs brocken or maimed. Many kids were watching – some were shocked, most were indifferent. As were the Police whom I stopped and to whom, I pointed the man out to.
Don’t let anybody tell you Korea is a progressive, modern country.
Judging by what I have seen, it most definately is not.