Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1894-05-09
What and How the Eastern
ASiaticS Eat.
c,.,,... :, cos,e,iu all Lands.

| In C1lna VlSlleu tDe ldl l0o1tIll-
rants, and watched the cooking of
dogs and cats in the soup. I priced
dried rats ct many a butchers shop,
and was offered plump, juicy
pussies for less than the cost of
their raising. I was told that tho
flesh of dogs would make brave the
men who ate it, and I watched not
a few people who smacked their
lips as they conveyed bits of cats
from their bowls to their mouths
These Chinese dog restaurants are
largely patronized by the poor peo-
pie of Canton. They are usually
on the ground floor, and they con-
sist of a kitchen at the front and a
dining room in the rear. From
nails on the walls and in the cell
ing hang the dressed bodies of
dogs, which look not unlike the
carcasses of pigs, and which hang
tail downward. Just below these,
upon great beds of coal or in oven
like stoves, are pots, in which dog
and cat stews simmer away. The
meat is cut up into bits as big as
the end of your finger, and is fried
with chestnuts and garlic in oil, or
is stewed into a sort of soup. At
the restaurant which I visited I
was told that could have pint
bowl of cat flesh for ten cents, and
as a special dainty I was offered
fried cats eyes at two cents apiece.
The cats are skinned before cook
ing, but the dogs are prepared for
the pot in the same way that we
make our pork.
The season for rats is in the
winter, and cats are good at any
time of the year. Pigs are the
scavengers of the city, and they
root their way into every quarter
and turn up the ground and wal
low in the mire on the very edge of
the emperor's palace in Peking.
You see pigs for sale in every
market, and the sucking pig in the
piece de resistance at every feast.
1t is never eaten in the roast, how
ever, but is hashed up into bits
and stewed, and this is the case
with all kinds Of Chinese meats.
Small bits are 81 nee cessity who're
chop pzstickg are used, and the re-.
suit is that most Chinese dishes
are soups or stews or roasts cut
fine. There is little beef used in
China, and goods COWS are practi-
cally unknown.
The Chinese use oil in the place
of butter, and the Indians use a
sort of a substitute for butter in
ghee, which is a sort of clarified
butter. The Indians are milk
drinkers, and the sacred COWS sup
ply many family with a great
part cf their food. The Chinese
are the greatest fowl-raisers in the
world, and they rank high among
the egg-eating nations. They never
eat all egg unless it be boiled hard
or picked, and the Chinese pre-
served eggs are one of the features
of their gastronomy. 1t takes forty
days to cure an egg properly. 1t
is not fit to eat before that age, and
after thai the older the better.
Lime, salt, and vinegar, are mixed
together IN the picking, and the
egg, when ready for use, is black
as coal.
All the principal nations of the
East which have large number
of Buddhists, are, to a great ex-
tent, non-consumers o. meat. The
Buddhists believe that their ances-
tors are trotting around inside the
feathers and under the fur and
hair of the animal creation, and
they believe it is a sin to take ami
NAL life. According to the theory
Of transmigration of souls a man
may be chewing up the choicest
bit of his great-grandfather's body
when he masticates a tenderloin
steak, and the tcnderest wing of
this years spring chicken may
have trotted around under the ami
nation of his grandmother's soul.
To people of delicate sensibilities
possessed of that faith which moves
mountains, such gastronomic re-
membranes would spoil their
feasts. 1t is for this reason that
the Burmese and Siamese eat 30 lit
tie meat, and is largely due to this
that you find but little meat, con-
sumo d in the greater part of India.