Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cannibalism in China
re|Cunard}} I have downloaded and evaluated the books by Zheng Yi and Gang Yue that Cunard has mentioned and I'll link their publisher's webpage here, along with other related sources, so people can purchase/download the works legally and check that I am evaluating these books fairly. I will hesitate to credit Zheng Yi's book https://www.routledge.com/Scarlet-Memorial-Tales-Of-Cannibalism-In-Modern-China/Zheng/p/book/9780813326160 Scarlet Memorial: Tales of Cannibalism in Modern China as a reliable source because it has received its fair bit of criticism on the reliability of its writing. For instance, Gang Yue (who is, notably, the other source Cunard mentioned), writes on page 251 in his book https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv125jmwq The Mouth That Begs: Hunger, Cannibalism, and the Politics of Eating in Modern China that "(Scarlet Memorial) can and must be read as a fictional text, despite the author's claim to historical accuracy and scientific truth" and describes Scarlet memorial as "political polemic" on page 246. In fact, a large part of chapter 6 (Pages 228 - 261) in Gang Yue's book is a critique of Zheng Yi's work and its reliability. This https://www.jstor.org/stable/26237369?seq=1 review and this https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280777795_Inscribing_the_Unspeakable_a_review_of_Scarlet_Memorial_Tales_of_Cannibalism_in_Modern_China_by_Zheng_Yi_trans_TP_Sym_Boulder_Colorado_Westview_Press_1996 review (along with others quoted in them) also notes that the book lacks evidence, has implicit Sino-centric assumptions concerning minorities, is prone to speculation and has a political bias that underlies it's claims. Now, onto Gang Yue's book https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv125jmwq The Mouth That Begs: Hunger, Cannibalism, and the Politics of Eating in Modern China itself. His book focuses mostly on "cannibalism" and "hunger" as literary metaphors and motifs for the social and political disorder and decay in twentieth-century China rather than an actual account of cannibalism in China. Most of the book focuses only on fictional literary depictions of cannibalism, and when Gang Yue does make a statement on real-life cannibalism, he states on page 62 that "Above all, one would be hard put to believe that real cannibalism has been a systematic social practice since the dawn of Chinese civilization, and the topic is more suitable for tall tales than serious literature". To me, it just seems... very counter-productive to retain a page titled "Cannibalism in China" (even as a page that redirects to another article) just to maintain a source which itself states that cannibalism isn't a part of Chinese culture in the real world at all. As such, both sources don't really provide much reliable information about real-world practices of cannibalism in China. As per , extraordinary claims require multiple high-quality sources. In this case, not only are there only a few sources, neither of the sources I have evaluated in this comment (which were deemed the most reliable out of the bunch) are high-quality enough in supporting the claims of cannibalism. In fact, one of the sources (Gang Yue's book) even contradicted the claims. Thus, I still think we should '''Delete''' the article and that there aren't enough good sources or content about the subject to merit a standalone page either
— User:Nyarlathotep1001, 19:40, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
Stance: comment
Cited policy: WP:EXTRAORDINARY (Wikipedia:Verifiability)