New! Shorter! Part 5 - Chinese restaurants that are proven NOT to serve Cats and Dogs (or rats) despite claims that they do.
Does such a long title really need anything more? Does anyone read subtitles?
Greetings and thanks for coming back.
Today is day 6 of an experimental schedule where I offer something every day. Pieces are also shorter and more digestible.
One one hand, I like it. I think it’s the way to make this thing work, and it gives me a better chance to meet my goals of having a wider readership and a reasonable income from this thing. It’s definitely a direction I want to go.
However . . , on the other hand . . , this just isn’t the time for it. As mentioned, I am taking a demanding class right now. (Although it’s not being taught in an academic setting but instead at a governmental office, when the course is taught in academic settings it’s often about 8 college credits. For those who missed the announcement yesterday, it’s a program for emergency medical service workers and ambulance people, one of my other big interests.) There is no way I can do this publication every day, and do well in the class.
And, if you wonder, one reason so many of you are getting everything here for free is that I am still experimenting and working the kinks out of this thing as I go along. But thanks for your patience as I do (and remember, it is okay to share this if you know someone else who would like it.)
I had an idea for an interesting topic for next week, but I just don’t have time to do the proper research, treat the topic with the proper respect, and actually write the pieces, and pass my class while learning the skills and material to the degree required to perform the way I wish to. When I do something important, I strive to be above average at it, and that would not be likely if I were to stretch myself that thin.
So please don't expect daily posts for a while.
My goal is to try for daily or mostly daily releases by January 1st. Please stick around and enjoy what happens in the meantime.
I do think people prefer the shorter piecess, and it is definitely a better way to do this, so I plan to continue with shorter, more frequent pieces, but not daily. Please stick around, enjoy what happens, and let’s see what I pull off.
Thanks.
CONTENT WARNING — CONTAINS LINKS TO OFFENSIVE MATERIALS DEALING WITH ANIMAL ABUSE SHARED TO EXAMINE HARMFUL ANIMAL ABUSE RUMORS, AS WELL AS AN EXTREMELY OFFENSIVE HISTORICAL IMAGE SHARED TO ILLUSTRATE PERIOD RACISM
(yeah, I just shared a content warning? Why not?)
This was found at a website called “ https://openart.ai/home “ and was intended to advertise their service and what it could do. Therefore, faced with a deadline, and looking for something quick and easy but not too tasteless, I decided it would be okay to share it. Note that the “Chinese characters” in the background are just gobbledygook squiggles, and not real Chinese. Apparently, like fingers, current AI technology has a problem with them in some cases. No cats were harmed in the making of this image, I presume.
While widespread Rumors of Chinese Restaurants secretly Serving Cats and Dogs are common in the USA, and surprisingly old, as of yet there is No Evidence that It Actually Happens.
Despite widspread rumors, there is no evidence that Chinese restaurants in the USA have ever actually secretly served dog or cat meat to customers.
Which is significant considering that many Chinese restaurants over the years have been cited for both health code violations and labor law violations. In fact, my impression is that it is not uncommon for rumors of serving cats to begin following such an incident.
Back in the 1980s, in nearby Saratoga Springs, there was a Chinese restaurant that came under a great deal of unwanted attention after a badly exploited female employee was beaten by several members of the owner’s family following an argument over division of tips. The police were called, multiple family members were charged with serious felonies, and a pattern of hiring illegal aliens with false promises, exploiting them badly, treating them harshly, bullying them, and underpaying them emerged. Ugly exploitation and intimidation of the powerless stuff. Sadly, I was attending college classes with two members of the owners’ family, knew them, sometimes got class assignments that I had missed from them, and enjoyed chatting with them, but had no idea anything bad was going on at the restaurant. Therefore, this was particularly shocking to me, as it also became obvious that someone I had considered a friend and was very fond of had been lying to me about many things ( for instance she had explicitly told me it was not her family’s restaurant, but she was assistant manager). Naturally when people I met talked about the incident and the restaurant, and they sometimes did as I worked concert security in that town and also had at least one ambulance acquaintance who claimed to have inside knowledge of what had happened, I would ask questions and try to learn everything I could when the topic came up.
More than once I heard a story about someone who knew someone in the local sherrif or police department who had been called to the scene and, guess what, also reportedly found lots of dead cats staked out or hung from trees behind the restaurant. Now not only is that not a normal way to store meat or the unneeded parts of a slaughtered animal, but in no case did I ever find a way to get a first hand report. Once, I was told by a person, “my father went there and here’s what he saw . . .” to which I said “I would really like to talk to your father about this.” I was then told that the man’s father had died so that would be impossible. That’s as close as I got. 1
Apparently, and sadly I believe this, to a lot of people stories about Chinese eating cats and serving them to restaurant customers are a lot more shocking than stories about Chinese engaging in human trafficking and exploitation of other Chinese, something that really does happen and is truly horrible
So that’s my first hand experience.
PART OF A HISTORICAL PATTERN
As we have seen the last few days, rumors and concepts, yet no actual evidence, of Chinese eating cats and rats was part of the societal fabric of 19th Century American and Australia. And at least one American company capitalized on that concept to sell its product not just in the USA but also in Australia.
“Circa 1880s, this ad endorsed a poison made from arsenic and coal, which was developed and marketed by the chemist and druggist Ephraim Wells and printed by Forbes Co. Boston.” 2 I’ve run across a reference to the product being widely known in Australia, however, as it was in the context of using it to poison allegedly undesirable types of people, and it’s not relevant, and I spent enough time spreading anti-Australian hate this week, I’ll let you google that yourself.
In the meantime, what do the experts say?
Sadly, the image of Chinese immigrants eating and secretly feeding strange things to their White neighbors has just not gone away or diminished despite the lack of evidence to back it up.
Here’s the some news reports and reports from Snopes, the fact checking and debunking people (and, boy, do I have an awesome video about them coming up soon.)
This one, set in Coral Springs, Florida, is particularly interesting because despite widespread rumors of serving dogs, no such restaurant even existed at the address described.
https://www.idausa.org/news/theres-no-chinese-restaurant-serving-dog-meat-in-coral-springs/
https://apnews.com/general-news-764ad16414834efbb33fdcfd6a71c20b
Here the story of the Coral Springs, Florida dog-meat-serving, Chinese restaurant gets the Snopes treatment. (Oh, and see below if you want to see what some folks in Taiwan had to say about the Snopes management and their ugly divorce.)
Here’s a blog that reports on the restaurant industry that decided to tackle this issue.
https://woolworthonfifth.com/chinese-restaurant-serving-cat-meat/
And here’s a report on the issue from a blog that deals with pets and concerns regarding animal companions. I saw nothing there that I disagreed with although there were many things I would have said differently and, like I did here today, I would have added more context.
https://petshun.com/article/do-chinese-restaurants-use-cats-and-dogs
Here’s a recent report from USA Today. Quite honestly, I don’t think that it's terribly well done, but as it is brand new I decided to share it.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/immigrants-eat-pets-is-a-century-old-stereotype-and-very-old-racism/ar-AA1qsrEz
Now this is a very ugly and disproven story about Chinese restaurants that allegedly served human fetuses in the nation of Cameroon. It gets the Snopes Treatment, and it appears that the Snopes people did a good job of tracking down where the disturbing photos really came from. (despite anything else I say, I like Snopes, just for the record.) It’s disturbing that some people believe these things without checking them out.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fetuses-found-in-chinese-restaurant-freezers/
Here’s a few more Chinese (and one Korean) restaurant related articles from Snopes. None of them confirm that this has ever happened in the USA.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hound-by-the-pound/
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cat-chinese-food/
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/kitchen-rats/
BUT IS THERE VIDEO EVIDENCE OF CHINESE RESTAURANTS IN THE USA SERVING DOGS AND CATS?
I went to YouTube and did some searching to try and see what might be there. I found this video and decided to share it. Basically, some kid with a video camera decided to stake out his local Halal grocery store (Or as he says “The halalal Chinese grocery!” even though it is not even a Chinese grocery store) and became excited when a truck arrived delivering what I believe to be whole goats, but which he mistakes as dogs.
For the record, the kid with the camera has an obvious accent. I wish he didn’t because some might think I am mocking people of his ethnic background, and I do not wish to do that. I just to wish to clarify that his video does not show what he thinks it shows.
Below, you can see a photo of a whole goat carcass found on websites that sell Halal meat. Notice how they match what is in the video.
https://dailybazar.com.bd/product/whole-goat-meat-10-kg/
Well gosh now, goats, being quadrupedal mammals, do look a bit like a dog, being another quadrupedal mammal, at least if you cut the feet and head off and skin them.
And if you want people mistaking animals for dogs, well, there’s this completely unconnected, completely uneducational, completely non-Asian history related video. It’s also kind of stupid, but in my defense it made me laugh, and after all this, I needed a laugh.
Tomorrow, I should tie this whole thing up with the real facts about dog and cat eating, and then we can all move on to something else. Stay tuned. We’ll have real World War Two history and more!
The whole thing was incredibly strange and scary. (I feel like the prhase “I am not making this up” is going to become a mantra at this publication.) This afternoon, I googled the case and discovered that apparently members of the family seem to still own the restaurant property, located in an isolated but commercially desirable stretch of main road outside of the town. Not only that, the family members were suing each other in court over control of the property. (which probably xplains why the property has been occupied by an ugly and unused different restautant with a chained shut parking lot for several years. I’d wondered about that each time I had driven past.) Anyway, I considered sharing identifying details but decided against it. While I am comfortable saying most of the family are truly terrible people, at least their trying to exploit each other last time I checked. So remember, while they have exploited the powerless and tormented the helpless, nevertheless, there is no documented evidence that they served cats and dogs to unsuspecting customers.
Quote and product description comes from https://glas.uic.edu/career-and-resources/teaching-against-racism/
Back when I was just a tadpole, about fifty years ago, there were two vaguely Chinese restaurants in the Uptown Shopping Center, Ray's Golden Lion and Lee's Tahitian. There were persistent rumors that they had been caught serving everything from badger to coyote to dog. None of these came to anything. Both are still there decades,later although they have moved more to gastro pub fare as better Asian and SE Asian restaurants have moved in.