I am a vegetarian, and, in the states, a fairly strict one. I engage some amount of “don’t ask, don’t tell” when it comes to broths in restaurants and at friends’ houses, and will sometimes pick around meat if it’s in big, avoidable chunks, but when I cook for myself it’s all veggie, all the time. In China I’m quite a bit looser. Although I still won’t eat straight up meat unless I think I’m in a position where refusing to do so would be quite rude, I’ll eat out of very meat-heavy dishes and order things with meat in them. My reasons for being a vegetarian range from health to environmental to ethical to just plain having lost the desire to swallow a steak, but I’ll say this: If I were only a vegetarian because of the way animals are treated, and, eventually, slaughtered back home, I’d be eating chicken in China .
A couple weeks ago, Malijun and I arrived early at a restaurant where we were going to have lunch with the rest of our team and some local teachers. After ordering enough to feed a small army (as is often the custom when we eat with anyone outside of our 4-person group), we headed to our table. A few minutes later, the owner’s small son (I’d guess he’s 7 or 8) wandered by, looking rather bored and holding a very alive and rustling chicken by its foot. The chicken, it would seem, outwitted the child, because a moment later we saw him chasing a running fowl. Eventually, feet beat out talons. I didn’t see the chicken’s throat slit, but by the time the owner was partway through draining its very fresh blood onto the cement floor of the courtyard, I had tuned back in. The chicken twitched a good bit, even after the owner dropped it to the floor and went to fetch a bucket of boiling water.
I found myself simultaneously repulsed and entranced as the owner dunked the still-twitching carcass into the bucket, sloshing it around like a rag, feathers growing heavy and grey. He plunked it down and plucked it—gloveless, as he had been since the beginning—a damp pile of fluff growing beside him. With a sharp knife, to took off the head and feet. Malijun, watching beside me, had long ago decided just how disgusting this whole thing was, but I found myself amazed. I wasn’t happy the chicken had just died, but the notion that this animal, alive five minutes earlier, would be gracing a plate five minutes later, made me just so very happy. This was exactly the way, I exclaimed to a rather grossed out co-worker, that meat should be consumed! But then, in China, or at least in rural China, that simply is the way meat is consumed. And it makes so much sense.
I’m a vegetarian. The idea of eating chicken grosses me out. But, if it didn’t, I’d be all over this stuff. Fish…perhaps not as much, as the preferred method of fish killing in these parts would seem to be throwing it from the tank to the ground and stomping on it. This sometimes results in fish flopping about for some time while cooks try to stomp properly. It can take 5 or 6 or 10 attempts. Oh…rural China.
