Earlier this year, there was a ruckus when Beijing authorities ordered local restaurants to stop serving dog meat. No one wanted visitors to the Summer Olympics disgusted by the local menus.
Now, the uproar is over cat meat on the menu.
It began with a report early this week in the Southern Metropolis Daily that said as many as 1,500 cats a time were being shipped from Nanjing along the Yangtze River down to the Pearl River Delta to sate appetite for cat meat in southern China.
Here are excerpts from that report, translated courtesy of the Danwei website:
At 3:37 on December 10th, the K25 train arrived at Dongguan East Station. About 1,500 cats had been sent on the train from Nanjing. Eight men wearing camouflage got on the train and started to move off the cages crammed with cats. Every time a cage landed on the ground, cats screeched in pain.
The invoice showed that this shipment contained 1,500 cats, and included a sterilization certificate and an animal quarantine certificate issued by official veterinerians.
And this:
Following a man who bought some cats, the reporter arrived at a Cantonese food restaurant where cat is priced for 36 yuan per kilo. In the restaurant, customers ordered a dish called "braised cat," which cost 147 yuan. Describing the dish, the waitress said that cat meat has the medicinal property of "nourishing yin and boosting yang." The customers said that they wanted to try it because they were curious.
Cats are packed in cages (from Nalan Jingmeng's blog)The reporter traced the source of the cats to suburban counties of Nanjing, where some people make a living catching cats and selling them for about 10 to 20 yuan each to wholesalers. These cat thieves are called "cat fishermen." A fisherman can catch about 20 cats in one night. A Nanjing-based organization which is committed to helping stray cats confirmed to the newspaper that there are far fewer stray cats in the city this year than normal.
Click here for a Chinese language website with rather pathetic photos of cats in cages and wooden boxes.
The news article triggered a wave of sympathy for the cats, and on Thursday several dozen protesters gathered in Beijing outside the Guangdong provincial government offices.
The issue has now gotten coverage across the mainstream Chinese media. One source says as many as 10,000 cats a day face a wok-ey future in Guangdong.
You may recall that during the SARS crisis in 2003, some health experts say they virus may have initially incubated in civet cats sold in wet markets, then leapt to humans.
Item: Blog postings will be limited until the New Year. I'll be on vacation in Florida.
"being shipped from Nanjing along the Yangtze River down to the Pearl River Delta"
ummm.... Check a map. The report I read, the same one on Danwei, so far as I remember, said they were shipped by train.
Your link to civet cats is also a bit much of a stretch. It's a rather vague term, and a bit of cursory research suggests there's only one species called civet cat in China that has a link closer to domestic cats beyond both being mammals and vaguely resembling the cats people keep as pets.
Posted by: chriswaugh_bj | December 20, 2008 at 06:06 AM
Westerners don't judge the Chinese nor what is culturally Chinese. Living in the west, we also abuse,torture and house in deplorable conditions our evening dinner.So before we go judging others, we should first judge and fix ourselves.
Posted by: k | December 20, 2008 at 04:51 PM
They eat rats too. yak!
Posted by: Jeff | December 20, 2008 at 09:07 PM
These cultures should be able to have the menu they desire, we house millions of chickens ducks, quail, and so on, we raise beef by the mega milliions,that weight tons and are all used for food around the world. these Cats or Dogs are of there past and future, to survive. We eat what we like, leave these people alone. There must be more pressing things to inform the people of,, the world from they are against or for,, ps : I would try the cat or dog !!!! Hope to travel to china before I die
Posted by: Richard moy | December 21, 2008 at 09:24 AM
You really don't want to see or know how chicken "nuggets" are made. Trust me. Wok cooked cat sounds wonderful compared to how "tenders" are made.
Posted by: moondawg | December 21, 2008 at 09:49 AM
Chris, the wording on that was awkward. What I meant was "Nanjing, which is on the Yangtze River..." As far as "shipping," I meant it in the generic sense. Of course, as Danwei noted, it was sent on the train, as the photos in the links indicate.
Posted by: Tim J | December 21, 2008 at 10:49 AM
It's interesting to note, too, why we weren't discussing cat on the menu before the Olympics. Cat is more of a winter food, meant to "warm" you up.
Posted by: jen | December 21, 2008 at 07:19 PM
Chicken nuggets is nothing compared to what hot dogs are made of. Google it, but at your own risk.
Posted by: pman | December 24, 2008 at 04:32 PM
Yeah, and neither chicken nuggets nor hot dogs are anything, compared to chicken claws, sparrows gizzards, human foetus, and all the other traditional 'delicacies' I see people in China eating on a regular basis.
Posted by: MyLaowai | December 24, 2008 at 07:09 PM
Love how you moderate your own comments section, while probably writing pieces on govt censorship in China - ah Americans, you rock!
Posted by: Ling | December 25, 2008 at 01:35 AM
How about those little girls thrown into rivers due to a clash between the PRC gov. and Chinese culture. Ah, China, you (fill in blank)
Posted by: Harbin | December 25, 2008 at 06:30 PM
Meanwhile in America kiddies are shooting their heads off with guns.
Posted by: peter | December 29, 2008 at 12:05 PM
Do eating cats, dogs and whatever really makes you live longer???? Those Buddhist monks with their limited vegan diet surely have a longer longevity than those people whom thinks eating cats and dogs make you live longer.
Posted by: Wen | December 31, 2008 at 08:34 AM
Love these arguments. It's ok to eat cats because we treat chickens badly in the states? Obviously the way to deal with both situations is to be vegan, vegeatarian, and if you can't do that at least read Omnivore's Dilemma.
Posted by: eaf1225 | January 03, 2009 at 02:03 AM
How can be cat equal to chickens and vegetables are also living being according to science.So for the ones who feel sorry for the animal should feel sorry also for the plants they eat to.Just because they don,t talk does not mean you can just eat your fellow living creatures or then again they are just food.
Posted by: Nax | January 03, 2009 at 04:34 PM
What is called a civet cat in the US is also called a polecat, or spotted skunk.
Posted by: Mike Davidson | January 04, 2009 at 12:37 PM
These comments are so puerile, it seems like a group of people who have absolutely no idea of their own culture or the ability to empathise with other cultures spending too much time trolling the internet.
Personally I wouldn't want to eat any animal that has lived in such terribly cruel conditions as it cannot be good for your karma/ soul to ingest something that has suffered.
Posted by: Chris | January 04, 2009 at 11:04 PM
These cats are not raised in factory farm conditions, as they are caught as stray cats. 1500 cats is little compared to the millions of chickens, pigs, and cows are killed for meat each year.
Posted by: pug_ster | January 05, 2009 at 10:39 AM
I agree with pug_ster yet I would also like to point out that I've seen what my cat eats and the idea of eating a carnivore like a cat is just utterly frightening.
And we wonder how things like SARS start.
Posted by: Chris | January 06, 2009 at 12:44 AM
hmmm, makes me wonder about those dishes that seem to have "mystery meat" at the local Chinee westauwant. I agree with everyone about the fact that the US treats its "meat" animals inhumanely. You think the cat pics are bad....you try being stuck behind an East Texas chicken truck, in the middle of summer. I thought about the chickens that were stuck in the middle of the 400 or 500 cages that were stacked up on the back on that flatbed........made me stop eating chicken and I haven't touched it since.
Posted by: L. Bucky Eads | January 06, 2009 at 02:38 PM
I saw the most beautiful Chines lady I have ever seen chomp into a perfectly deep fried BAT!.
They have their culture and a large part of that culture is what they choose to eat. It's not our business or place to opine.
Posted by: Jeff T | January 09, 2009 at 10:59 AM
A bat?...Yikes!!!! I'm going to "wok the dog"
Posted by: Stan | January 09, 2009 at 02:56 PM
mother fuckin bastards only eat cats n dogs... cheap humans
Posted by: maxi | March 22, 2009 at 06:39 AM