Some Cultural Beliefs That You and Me Don’t Believe
By: The Isthmus
Tags: Money, Chinesegovernment, Abortion, Foodie, Fitness

Australia is a multicultural country that allows Aussies and foodies to experience multicultural foods and customs. Every culture has its own foods, special recipes for certain dishes, and customs for eating foods. Each culture has it’s own belief system to influence its people’s thinking around food. If you are a foodie (that’s me), you probably like to meet up with some international friends and ask them what the different foods from their culture are, and the meanings behind their food rituals.

Recently, I have become interested in the Chinese food beliefs and values. In Chinese culture, they believe the concept of ‘yi xing bu xing’- it means that if you eat an organ or bone of an animal, then it will be good for the corresponding organ of your body. For example, if your leg gets hurt, your parents (if they are Chinese) will make some pig’s trotters soup for you to cure your leg injury. This may not make sense to you if you are not Chinese, but it is common to every single Chinese person.

pig’s trotters soup

One of the jokes made by my Chinese friends was that: if you are stupid, you need to eat monkey’s brain to ‘tonify’ your brain- it means to make yourself to become smarter. When I heard that, I was trying to ask them if that is true or not — but they just laughed and ignored my question. I was curious and wanted to find out for myself. I searched for the beliefs and values of traditional Chinese food on the internet.

From an outsider’s view, there are two traditional Chinese foods that are extremely gross and seem heartless.

№1: Eat Live Monkey Brain

EAT LIVE MONKEY’S BRAIN

In the Chinese culture, they believe that eating live monkey brain can cure impotence. It is an expensive dish, so it can only be afforded by rich people. It means that doing this is also a symbolic behavior to show their social class within society.

Warning this video shows the way of how people eat monkey’s brain.

DAMN IT, That can’t be real.

However, the question is: Is it true that it can cure impotence?

In fact, eating monkey brain can cause humans to get Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease . This is a disease that is similar to Mad Cow disease, “which causes progressive dementia, impaired vision, depression, and eventually death.” There is no any scientific evidence to prove that it can help humans to cure impotence. If you saw someone eating live monkey’s brain in a restaurant, you will probably walk in and ask him, “what’s wrong with you”. To me, they are not eating food, they are torturing an animal.

№2: Baby Herbal Soup

Baby Herbal Soup

Do you know what is Baby Herbal Soup? Yes, you are right. The dead baby is one of the main ingredient in the soup.

What the Hell!!!

The reason to eat baby herbal soup is because the traditional Chinese culture believes that it can help them to boost their stamina, increase the supply of sperm and the sexual performance. In the last few scenes of the video below, some customers shared their experience of how their sexual performance has improved after taking baby herbal soup.

Warning: this video shows dead baby eating in China-shocking footage underground restaurants.

As the potion’s effect, people has used aborted baby to produce some pills for business purpose.

The Progress of Making Infant Fetuses Pills

In China, those ‘infant Fetuses Pills’ producers cut the fresh aborted infant into “small pieces, dried, microwaved, and then ground them into a coarse powder”. After that, they store the powder into a tablet. In Hong Kong’s weekly publication which is in 2007, the Next Magazine, it stated that this kind of infant fetuses was a prevalence health and beauty supplement in China. Although there is no official evidence to prove that those tablets are made in China, there are many eyewitnesses have seen this kind of Chinese cultural violation.

Oh no

Comment from A Medical Professional

Dr. William Schaffner’s, chairman of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Centre, said that the process of making these pills of human flesh is not done in a hygienic fashion. It may potentially cause infection to people .

The South Korean authorities also declared that these pills may be dangerous to human health. To accuse the Chinese Medical companies, South Korean SBS television channel filmed a documentary which is about how they collaborate with abortion clinics to produce infant flesh capsules with dead infant.

What is The Reason to do that?

As the belief of eating monkey’s brain and baby herbal soup, there is only one reason for them to explain why they want to commit these kind of ruthless and gross behaviour:

MONEY! MONEY! MONEY!

Those unscrupulous traders want to earn big money from the foolishness of people by using the power of cultural belief.

In 2006, research conducted in GuangZhou declared that there were more than 50% of Chinese men aged around 40 to 70 who were suffering from erectile dysfunction. As the social problem, it is an opportunity for those unscrupulous traders to earn easy money from those Chinese men who were suffering from erectile dysfunction.

To convince those patients to believe the benefits of eating monkey’s brain and baby herbal soup, those unscrupulous businessmen use the cultural concept of ‘yi xing bu xing’ to spread the information. From this cultural logic, it shows that the cultural belief plays important role in structuring the power of hegemony to force people to believe its value. Therefore, those unscrupulous businessmen sold these pills to them and earn their money even though those pills didn’t get approved by using reliable scientific evidence. I also believe that those producers will not have the guts to try these pills for themselves.

Where are those babies from? Abortion?

Since in the late of 1970s, the Chinese government launched ‘one child policy’ in every single family. For those families who had more than one child, they needed to pay a fine to the government. But, it may not be affordable to most of the family’s financial income. Therefore, according to the Financial Times, there were 336 millions abortions from the late of 1970s until 2013. Hence, buyers could illegally buy those body parts of a baby at the hospital in GuangDong.

As the supply and demand in the market, it encouraged those unscrupulous businessmen to earn a big amount of ‘dirty money’ into their pockets.

Although the government has changed from one-child policy to two-child policy, the problem may not to be solved.

Currently, it is a great news to hear that the Chinese government has allowed their people to have more than one child; that means that they can have two (MAXIMUM). If they have more than two children, they still need to abort the pregnancy. It may reduce the number of abortion, but it is impossible to disencourage people to have abortion. Therefore, it may not stop those heartless businessmen to get dead infants from hospitals and clinics and sell baby herbal soup or pills.

What is the solution?

I would recommend to the China government is that they can hire some famous celebrities in China to produce a series of viral videos on social media. It is possible to educate the public and encourage them to stop believing the cultural belief of eating monkey’s brain and baby herbal soup, as the power of celebrities is able to grab the attention from the public, no matter they are young or elder. Such as, the idea of “Demand a Plan” which is a gun control plan for matching the declaration of President Obama in the election of 2012.

Also, the government in China has to put more effort on improving their education system to allow more people to become more knowledgeable. When people have been educated, they won’t easily believe those unrealistic cultural beliefs.

The Fact You Should Believe in

In this advanced technological era, there are many scientific pieces of evidence have been proved that people can improve their sexual performance if we do more exercise in the gym and take health nutritions and supplements, especially in Australia.

Exercise and nutritional supplement

No offence, everyone should respect others’ cultural knowledge because they passed down from generation to generation. However, as the improvement of human knowledge, we should stop believing that “non-make sense” and “untruth” beliefs in our life.