Odd News

Youths give Guangzhou's oldest dog meat eatery a miss

By Li Wenfang (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-06-05 07:11

GUANGZHOU - Arguably the most popular dog meat restaurant in the capital of South China's Guangdong province is seeing fewer and fewer youngsters walking through its doors.

But Guangzhou Sunshine Fragrant Meat Restaurant's middle-aged and elderly customers continue to remain largely loyal.

The love for dogs as pets and the arrival of new styles of eateries in Guangzhou are two of the major reasons youngsters are staying away from the 47-year-old restaurant, said Pan Yongxuan, its chairman and general manager.

Kat Zheng, a college student in the city, said she has never eaten dog meat and does not wish to in the future.

"The eating habits of Cantonese people have started to change, since more and more people have started keeping dogs as pets," she said.

"Whether people want to continue eating dog meat is a personal choice. But I would never like to eat a dog."

Kat added that with time people's mindset has changed and will continue to change further.

"Dog eaters will continue to decrease as time passes," she said.

The Sunshine Fragrant Meat Restaurant faced two of its toughest months in January and February this year, when the media reported a regulation on animal protection, including a ban on the consumption of dogs and cats, was in the pipeline, Pan said.

"The restaurant received innumerable calls from customers who wanted to know if we would continue serving dog meat," he said.

Pan questioned the logic of differentiating dogs from the horse, cow, sheep, chicken and pig - all of which are raised as domestic animals in China.

Cantonese people, who believe in food therapy, buy the theory that dog meat reinforces the kidney, stomach and blood. Renowned ancient physician Li Shizhen (1518-1593), who wrote the revered Great Compendium of Herbs believed the same.

Eating dog meat does not signify hatred for dogs as pets, said Pan. "Dogs that are cooked aren't raised as pets, but food."

The dog meat in Peixian county, Jiangsu province, was even listed as a provincial intangible cultural heritage last year.

Tan Guangning, a college student in Guangzhou, who regularly visits Sunshine restaurant to have his favorite dog meat hot pot, said: "If dogs are raised for the very purpose of cooking, I have no problems with it.

"We should not treat a dog differently from other domestic animals just because it is more intelligent."

Sunshine Fragrant Meat Restaurant was founded in 1963 as a State-owned eatery, as a means to reinvigorate the market economy and Cantonese cuisine specialty when the country was still going through economic difficulties.

"It (opening the restaurant) was a political task," Pan said.

The restaurant was close to the then venue of the Chinese Export Commodities Fair, and many foreigners, mostly Asians, visited during the fair.

Fans of the restaurant include foreign state leaders, overseas Chinese, Asians, westerners and people from other parts of the country.

During the economically difficult period, the restaurant could not find enough local dogs and turned to those from the north from 1965 to 1968.

Since northern dogs taste different, the restaurant invented a special sauce, which has remained the secret to its popular flavor.

"(Our customers) queued up before we opened on winter mornings," Pan said, adding winters are always a busy time for the restaurant.

Although several other State-owned dog meat restaurants, which opened in 1970s, shut shop by the mid-1980s, Sunshine Fragrant only moved to another location in the city in 1995, with its cover increasing from 60 to 200.

The restaurant was turned into a share-holding company in 2000 amid the reform of the catering sector in the city. All the employees in the restaurant are shareholders.

But the restaurant's operation has become harder since then, due to the rising costs it has to bear independently.

Decreasing government and corporate customers has been a major reason for the slowing business.

Pan said he hoped the city government shows more support to the catering industry as a whole, as some other cities do.

Shen Shuhui contributed to this story.