DOGS OF CHINA AND JAPAN 



not far from the ditch of the castle, where we saw a new pro- 

 clamation put up lately and twenty shuits of silver nail'd to the 

 post to be given as a reward to any body that would discover 

 the accomplices of a murder lately committed upon a dog. 

 Many a poor man hath been severely punish 'd in this country, 

 under the present Emperor's reign, purely for the sake of 

 dogs." * 



The Chinese three-character classic, to this day a schoolroom 

 text-book, continues to instil into the schoolboy mind that the 

 canine and equine races supply two of the six kinds of flesh 

 edible by man. To this day, too, dogs closely resembling the 

 foreign " chow " are bred in parts of Quangtung and Quangsi 

 Provinces for culinary purposes. Black dogs are considered to 

 be the most nutritious. " Flowery dogs " those of mixed 

 colour are reputed to be the most palatable, those of yellow 

 and white colour following them in culinary value. The 

 puppies are fattened on rice, and killed at an age of about nine 

 months. After removing the hair by scalding, the body is cut 

 into six or eight pieces and boiled for about an hour. It is 

 then fried in oil. The meat is cut into small pieces and cooked 

 with dry mushrooms, preserved bean-cake, native onion, a 

 little ginger, and water-chestnuts. The dish resulting is said 

 to be exceedingly palatable, and to have the property of re- 

 ducing fatigue due to sleeplessness. For this reason the dish 

 was very popular with students in the provincial and national 

 examinations of the Manchu regime, which were carried on 

 continuously for several days. 



Archdeacon Gray,f writing in 1878 of the dogs '-flesh 

 restaurants of Canton, states that in the city there were no less 

 than twenty such places " where cooks may be seen standing in 

 front of slow fires over which the flesh of cats and dogs is 

 being cooked. Placards are sometimes placed above the door, 



* Kaempfer. f " China," J. H. Gray, vol. ii, p. 76. 



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