quote:

International groups and celebrities, backed by millions of foreign petitioners, have rallied against an annual dog meat festival in the Chinese city of Yulin: but the protests may have backfired, residents say, spurring more people to eat man’s best friend.

“My store’s dog-meat sales are much higher than before, last year was up more than 50 percent,” the owner of Yulin Number One Crackling Dog Meat Shop told AFP.

The city, deep in the poverty-stricken southern Chinese region of Guangxi, has drawn international fury for the beating and boiling alive of animals in the belief that the more frightened the dogs, the tastier the meat, activists say.

More than 10,000 animals are killed for the summer solstice festival, which has drawn the notice of celebrities such as British reality TV star Simon Cowell who denounced it as “barbaric”.

This year’s event is scheduled for June 21, but tensions are already growing.

Last month, activists from China‘s nascent animal-rights movement stopped a Guangxi-bound van carrying 400 dogs and cats, some still wearing pet collars.

But campaigners’ efforts have had a perverse effect, locals say.

“Because of the protests, more people know that Yulin has a dog meat festival, so everyone comes and tries it,” said the dog meat seller, surnamed Lin.

“As we get closer to the dog meat festival, all Yulin’s hotels are completely full.”

Lin has opened a dog meat delivery service because “large numbers of people are placing orders online,” she added.

Even dog lovers in Yulin say that protest tactics have backfired.

“I used to think our enemy was the dog meat lovers,” said the operator of a new dog shelter, who asked not to be named. “Now I see our enemy is the activists from outside.”

He fiercely opposes the dog trade and has adopted a retriever rescued from a market, but believes that international protests are “sabotage” that drive people to ferociously defend their custom.

Changing tactics

Local patriotism and cultural pride make outsiders bad messengers for change, the shelter operator said.

Foreigners often encounter hostility in Yulin, with butchers known to knock cameras out of visitors’ hands.

“When foreigners come to China and say China has this or that problem, people get disgusted with you and won’t listen,” he said.

“Because of media hype, more and more dog meat is eaten.”

To reduce the number of slaughtered dogs, the shelter operator has built a pet centre to demonstrate that the animals can produce more income as consumers of clothing and pet paraphernalia than as meat.

“Our local centre is purely commercial,” he said. “Our goal is not to abolish all eating of dog meat, but to give this city an antibody, to resist… this virus.”

Andrea Gung, the Taiwanese-American founder of California-based Duo Duo, a group that organised a 2.5 million-signature petition against the festival, says that the fury she has encountered forced her to change approach.

“Everyone hated us,” she said of last year’s festival, noting that dog-lovers receive such animosity in Yulin that they no longer identify as activists.

Now her group is sponsoring animal welfare programmes in schools, hoping to turn the next generation against dog eating by making it “uncool”.

“We want to come up with some slogan like, ‘Cute girls don’t date dog eaters,'” she said, adding that most afficionados in Yulin are men, who believe the meat increases virility.

Daily trade

China has no laws to protect non-endangered species.

Although the protests focus on Yulin’s festival, canines are butchered and eaten year-round in many places in southern China without attracting international outrage.

In Yulin, a humid city pockmarked by empty factory lots, sidewalk vendors slice meat from dog carcasses on hooks and feed them to men around low tables crowded with beer.

City markets have sections dedicated to selling the meat and restaurant adverts show images of well-groomed retrievers.

The Humane Society International (HSI) has sent researchers to tour slaughterhouses and estimates that an average of 300 dogs are killed in the city daily.

This is despite the fact that pet ownership has grown rapidly in China over the past decade, with almost 30 million households now owning a dog, according to research group Euromonitor.

Washington, DC-based HSI protested at Yulin’s Beijing office Friday and mailed an 11 million-signature petition to President Xi Jinping.

The #StopYulin campaign has become one of HSI’s “biggest” campaigns now, the group’s China specialist Peter Li said.

But the idea that the protests might drive a backlash in Yulin and fuel dog consumption, he said, was “hugely exaggerated”.

“A backlash for the short term, yes. But in the long term, I don’t worry.”

StarMinstrel posted:

P-Mack posted:

I wonder if how highly developed and intensively cultivated China was played a role. Less dense areas people can scrounge the wilderness for mushrooms or whatever before jumping straight to eating corpses. Purely idle speculation on my part.

quote:

In Xinyang, people starved at the doors of the grain warehouses. As they died, they shouted, "Communist Party, Chairman Mao, save us". If the granaries of Henan and Hebei had been opened, no one need have died. As people were dying in large numbers around them, officials did not think to save them. Their only concern was how to fulfill the delivery of grain.

nerdz posted:

I heard once that China had the money to import food but suffered an embargo by capitalist countries, which is basically the opposite of what was said here.

nerdz posted:

Yeah, I mean, there WAS a trade embargo against china that covered most food products. What I don't really know is if China could actually afford to import food or if it even was trying to

Mao's Great Famine posted:

Beijing government officials, including Zhou Enlai and Mao, increased the food procurement quota from the countryside to pay for international imports. According to Dikötter, "In most cases the party knew very well that it was starving its own people to death." Mao was quoted as saying in Shanghai in 1959: “When there is not enough to eat people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.”

Haier posted:

Ccs posted:

But China is really good at realistic art. Like, the average kid who take the art tests in China have much much better observational skills and dedication to craft than most Western art students.

Fauxtool posted:

are you black, tall, or very fat?

Pollyanna posted:

is this literally only happening because small blonde kid?

KomodoWagon posted:

Not sure about that, but then again I'm not hugely invested in Thai affairs. As far as I understand it, any threat to the monarchy is seen as a satanic act of treason, not unlike Lucifer's rebellion against God.

Pon de Bundy posted:

interesting, so the women are allowed to drink a lot and it doesn't ruin FACE?

Invisible Handjob posted:

japan tried to import them en masse a while back to solve their labor shortage, figuring if the japanese could accept any immigrants it would be ethnic japanese

only took a couple years before there were massive calls for their deportation, they were actually paid by the government to leave and agree to never come back

Deceitful Penguin posted:

Some folks liked it, others (me) pointed out that it's bad scholarship

Get it if you want, it won't explain either of the things you mention tho


if you want real academic book reccs try the D&D thread (lol does anyone still seriouspost there tho)

Boiled Water posted:

an interesting society that goes "boy missing" to "nigerians ate him". Do they all subscribe to the daily main chain of thought?

simplefish posted:

Pull a sickie, the doc will still prescribe you like 7 packets of pills and the opiate syrup without bkinking twice

angel opportunity posted:

My favorite thing to eat in CQ is ganguo. I personally think hot pot in Chongqing sucks. It's extremely oily and not as good as hot pot in the north, but ganguo is great