CHAPTER II 

 DOG-LORE AND SUPERSTITION 



IN parts of Europe, temporary isolation and rise in the 

 cost of living have, from time to time, caused the flesh 

 of the horse and other animals little known to the arts 

 of cookery to be used as the food of man. In China, poverty, 

 due to over-population, has existed from time immemorial, 

 and it is not surprising to find, in the stories of early foreign 

 travellers, confirmation of the wide-spread belief that, not- 

 withstanding the nation's high degree of civilization, dog- 

 flesh has been used as human food in that country. The 

 Arab traveller Ibn Batuta wrote, about A.D. 1342, " The flesh 

 of swine and dogs is eaten by the Chinese pagans, and it is 

 sold publicly in their markets." * Fernam Mendez Pinto, a 

 Portuguese whose remarkable adventures are recorded by 

 Purchas, wrote two hundred years later, " We saw pennes 

 full of little dogges to sell . . . frogs, snakes, snailes, all 

 being meate with them (the Chinese)." f " The ordinary 

 and daily meals are made by the Chinese very early," writes 

 another traveller, " for they have an opinion that if they should 

 fast till noon some misfortune should befall them that day. 

 They are not curious in their diet, for they eat all manner of 

 flesh without difference, as well that of a horse as of an ox : 

 they are great lovers of swine's flesh, which they praise as the 

 most delicious of any, and is preferred by them before any 



* " Cathay and the Way Thither," vol. iv, p. no. 



f " Purchas his Pilgrimes," vol. xii, p. 109, Maclehose. 



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