Living abroad, whenever I’m at a party and things get lively, there are always a few people with a sense of ‘superior civilization’ superiority who feign innocence and ask me:
“Do Chinese people eat dogs?”

Their eyes are often thirty percent curiosity and seventy percent judgment. It’s as if my nod would instantly devolve me from a modern human into a blood-drinking barbarian. I’ve long since stopped rushing to explain. Instead, I smile and ask back:
“Do you drink milk? Do you eat veal?”

This isn’t just about different dietary habits; it’s a game of moral hypocrisy and the power to define the narrative.

1. The Bloody Truth Behind Milk: The Hidden “Systemic Cruelty”

Westerners’ protection of dogs stems from an emotional projection—dogs are family. However, this overflowing affection vanishes without a trace when faced with industrial farming.

Take milk, a staple for Westerners, as an example. Have you ever wondered why dairy cows produce milk continuously?
Because they are constantly being artificially inseminated, getting pregnant, and giving birth.

The logic behind this is brutally cruel: for humans to drink milk, the newborn calves (especially males), unable to produce milk and prized for their tender meat, are often sent to the slaughterhouse shortly after birth to become an expensive delicacy—veal.

This is the true definition of “wiping the plate clean”: plundering the mother’s milk and devouring the child’s flesh.

In comparison, is the cruelty of this industrial process really more civilized than “eating dogs”?
This is the Western logical trap: anything that can please humans and provide emotional value (like dogs) is a “friend”; anything that is silent and provides nutritional value (like cows) is an “industrial raw material.”

This isn’t humanitarianism; it’s a “species pageant”—the cute ones get immunity, while the plain-looking ones deserve to be eaten.

2. A Historical Perspective: In China, the Truly “Sacred” Animal Was the Cow, Not the Dog

Let’s return to the historical context.
China is a classic agrarian civilization. For thousands of years, the truly inviolable core resource was the cow, not the dog.

In an era without tractors, cattle were the power for plowing, the guarantee of grain production, and a “strategic asset” for a family, or even a dynasty. Therefore, the laws protecting cattle throughout Chinese history were far stricter than what Westerners might imagine today.

1. How Dynastic Laws Protected Draft Cattle

  • Pre-Qin and Han Dynasties
    The Book of Rites already stipulated: “A feudal lord shall not kill an ox without due cause.”
    By the Han Dynasty, privately slaughtering draft cattle was considered a serious crime, with severe cases even punishable by death.

  • The Prosperous Tang Dynasty
    The Tang Code explicitly stated:

    He who kills a cow shall be sentenced to one and a half years of penal servitude.
    On a legal level, the life of a draft ox was valued more highly than that of ordinary livestock, and even more than some human rights.

  • Up to the Qing Dynasty
    The Great Qing Legal Code, the last imperial dynasty’s law, continued this tradition:

    Privately slaughtering one’s own draft ox is punishable by one hundred strokes of the cane and three years of penal servitude.

This means—
For thousands of years in Chinese society, eating beef was not only “improper” but also illegal.

2. The True Place of Dogs in Traditional China

Unlike cattle, the role of dogs in traditional Chinese society was very pragmatic:

  • Guarding the home
  • Assisting in hunts
  • Serving as a secondary food source when necessary

The idiom “hanging a sheep’s head to sell dog meat” (a bait-and-switch) itself illustrates:
Eating dog meat was a perfectly ordinary, everyday practice in ancient China, carrying no moral stigma whatsoever.

The famous Han Dynasty general Fan Kuai started his career as a “dog butcher,” and the future emperor Liu Bang also ate dog meat in his early years—
At that time, this was as natural and common as Westerners eating beef today.

3. The Greatest Irony

A thought-provoking fact is:

The beef hot pot, sirloin steaks, and steak culture popular on Chinese tables today are precisely the products of Western culinary influence since modern times.

In other words:

  • You taught us to eat the “sacred cow” that toiled its entire life;
  • And then you turn around and condemn us for eating the so-called “man’s best friend.”

This logic is itself filled with the absurdity of cultural hegemony.

3. Aesthetics and Values: Who Defines “Civilized” and “Barbaric”?

This cultural double standard is not just present at the dinner table; it permeates the very definitions of aesthetics and values.

Interestingly, ancient Chinese were not unfamiliar with “high noses, deep-set eyes, blonde hair, and blue eyes”—but those were the features of Zhong Kui and door gods. In traditional Han Chinese perception, these features, due to their intimidating appearance, were assigned the function of “warding off evil” and even carried a certain “non-human,” demonic connotation.
In contrast, traditional Chinese beauty was the solemn grace of the Dunhuang Apsaras, the subtle gentleness of Lin Daiyu’s “phoenix eyes,” and the plump elegance of Tang Dynasty court ladies.

Yet today, under the influence of Western cultural hegemony, the features of a door god have become the standard for “international supermodels,” while original Eastern charm has become “unconventional.”
This is the same logic as the “dog-eating” issue: the West holds the power of definition.

They define what is “beautiful,” and so monolids become a flaw to be corrected;
They define what is “civilized,” and so eating dog meat becomes barbaric, while force-feeding geese for their livers (foie gras) and separating mother cows from their calves becomes “culinary culture.”

4. Conclusion: Refuse to Be Judged

Personally, I don’t eat dog meat, but this is purely out of emotional aversion, not moral superiority. As long as the dogs are raised for meat legally and ethically, I would never package my personal emotional preference as a universal standard of civilization to judge others’ dinner tables.

The next time someone asks you, “Do Chinese people eat dogs?”, please don’t feel ashamed or rush to explain that “only a small number of people do.”
You can calmly tell them:

“The beauty of the world lies in its diversity. In China, we respected the labor of the cow; in the West, you cherish the companionship of the dog.
But please don’t stand on a moral high ground looking down on everyone while slicing your veal.
What’s truly being consumed is often not the dog, but humanity’s most basic reason and tolerance.”