Los Angeles Times, 7/4/04: China's Carnivorous Eating Habits Become Food for Debate

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Los Angeles Times

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-cuisine4jul04,1,6246955.story

 

THE

WORLD

 

China's

Carnivorous Eating Habits Become Food for Debate

 

In a

nation where all living things are game, health issues push some

toward vegetarianism.

 

By John M.

Glionna

Times Staff Writer

 

July 4, 2004

BEIJING - Sherry Xia wants to start a revolution in China.

The vegetarian restaurant owner frets over this culture's obsessive

appetite for animals, including wild and even endangered

creatures.

 

The former lawyer winces at the scorpions - stingers still on -

silkworms and sparrow chicks-on-a-stick served up as snacks at street

stalls, and the snakehead soup, peacocks and badgers offered in

restaurants.

 

Then there are the more tame but, to her, still distasteful dishes,

from dog and pigeon to pork lungs and solidified duck

blood.

 

Xia wants to see her country eat less meat and animal organs and

concentrate on a more healthful vegetarian diet.

 

" China, " she says, " needs to enter the 21st century

when it comes to its food. "

 

Xia isn't the only one alarmed by the nation's dietary habits.

International experts and many Chinese are concerned after a rash of

food safety scares - such as SARS and phony milk powder, markets

selling chemical-tainted bean sprouts and restaurants that spiked

their dishes with opium poppies to keep customers coming

back.

 

The SARS outbreaks of the last two winters drew international

attention to China's wild animal trade, with epidemiologists saying

the respiratory disease may have come from civet cats, a species

commonly eaten in southern China.

 

The sometimes fatal lung disease, which spread to 17 countries on five

continents, has relented, but no one knows for how long - or whether

the virus for another potential outbreak might be lurking somewhere

else in the Chinese diet.

 

" This is not going to go away, " said Jeff Gilbert, a World

Health Organization researcher.

Although international health advocates welcome the government's ban

on eating and trading of wild animals in southern China's Guangdong

province and elsewhere, they say a greater challenge lies in changing

traditional attitudes that consider nearly all living things as frying

pan fodder.

China's appetite for animals spans generations. In poor areas,

residents have adapted their diet to whatever staples they can find,

including cats, and even rats. Wealthy Chinese seek out bizarre and

expensive dishes - from peacocks to pangolins, a scaly relative of

the anteater - for their novelty. Others eat animal organs for their

perceived medicinal benefits.

 

" It's a cultural thing, what people choose to eat, " said

Julie Hall, the WHO's SARS team leader in Beijing. " It's a

sensitive issue in China. "

 

Yet cuisine criticism has come from within China as well. This year,

Beijing opened a Food Safety Office to investigate potentially harmful

food sources, and the government has moved to consolidate its

monitoring and enforcement of wild-animal farms

nationwide.

 

The prospect of contracting SARS has alarmed some Chinese diners.

Although vegetarianism is hardly new to China - it has been a part

of Buddhism for centuries - Beijing had only one vegetarian

restaurant in 2000. Now, nearly a dozen meatless venues have opened,

frequented in part by former carnivores eager to change.

 

Likewise, in a growing " green " movement, hundreds of

professional cooks have signed a manifesto pledging to convince 8

million fellow chefs throughout China to stop cooking rare

animals.

The move was inspired by Zhang Xingguo, a young chef who was fired by

numerous restaurants for refusing to cook cranes and other wild

beasts. Going door to door to convert other cooks, he was honored for

his efforts with a vegetarian dinner this spring by animal rights

activists.

 

" A kitchen without wild animals is a better place to work, "

said Wang Zhong, a vegetarian chef and a follower of Zhang who used to

cook snakes, pigeons and protected turtles. " It's more

emotionally healthy. "

 

A study by the China Wild Animal Protection Assn. found that scores of

species of wild animals are used in Chinese cooking, including many

that the government has declared endangered.

 

At the government-run Donghuamen night market in Beijing, stalls

lighted by lanterns sell such snacks as seahorse, scorpion and

snake-on-a-stick.

 

With a shrug, vendor Zhang Zhongbin produced a can swarming with

skittering scorpions and threw three into the fryer. " If

foreigners don't like them, don't eat them, " he said. " You

don't understand, anyway. "

 

Some Chinese epidemiologists say the nation's food cravings may go too

far. A delicacy known as drunken shrimp - dipped in alcohol and

eaten alive once the head is pinched off - illustrates the potential

danger.

 

The shrimp " carry parasites that are dangerous if you eat them

raw, " said Zu Shuxian, a professor at Anhui Medical University

near Shanghai. " People need to be careful. "

 

He said many Chinese believe that wild beasts are free of growth

chemicals presumably fed to domesticated animals. " They think

this will improve their health, " he said. " Asked why she

eats domestic cats, an elderly woman explained: 'Winter is coming. I

need to eat something furry.' "

The WHO is working with the Chinese government to enact new health

procedures to prevent another epidemic. The U.S. also is planning a

joint program to study emerging infectious diseases and the handling

of wild animals, said an embassy official in Beijing.

 

" We've improved communication with the Chinese, but we have to

keep an open mind, " said Hall, the WHO official. " We may not

eat dogs or cats, but we do eat raw oysters. We just shouldn't pass

judgmentŠ. What we need is more research. "

 

Liu Tong agrees that one diner's delicacy may be another's

indigestion.

 

He manages a Beijing restaurant, called Getting Stronger From the Pot,

which serves more than 20 types of animal sex organs that he says aid

virility.

 

" It's just a matter of changing minds, " Liu said.

" Animal organs are not as disgusting as you think. The Chinese

have been eating them ever since the Qing Dynasty. If you ate one, I

guarantee you'd like it. "

 

Liu pointed to American milk products, which many Chinese find

unappetizing. " I used to think the cheese on pizza was

disgusting, " he said. " But once I tried it, I liked

it. "

 

With the origin of SARS still a mystery, restaurants like Sherry Xia's

vegetarian Lotus in Moonlight are expected to thrive. Manager Zhao

Gang says the healthy food environment convinced him to give up meat

for good.

 

When his neighbors recently cut down some trees, orphaning several

sparrow chicks, Zhao went to the rescue. " We nursed the injured

ones back to health, " he said. " Before I became a

vegetarian, I might have just played around with those

birds. "

 

Or, he admitted with a sheepish grin, even eaten them.

 

But even Xia knows that change comes slowly in China. She wonders

whether the vegetarianism will catch on in the nation's rural areas.

And even in modern Beijing, many tofu-eating diners still puff

cigarettes while they eat.

 

Xia took down a " No Smoking " sign when business plummeted:

" I can only change one of China's bad habits at a

time. "

 

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