Yes, it’s a live fish. The Youtube video upsetting PETA depicts Chinese diners poking at the still gasping mouth of what’s for dinner. The plate isn’t hot, but watch your fingers! The meat is blackened to a crisp, while from the neck up the fish is kept wet with towels to ensure it doesn’t expire before the last bite. My, what a playful presentation with the red sauce!
I do wonder about the Chinese obsession with keeping food alive as long as possible. In the video the diners are laughing at the fish’s sudden reactions, which leaves the impression they are as surprised as we about this live novelty. But I doubt it is so rare an event among those who can afford it. I remember at outdoor markets in China, watching customers buy slices of fish meat cut directly from the sides of live fish. Does live fish keep longer than dead? Certainly it does.
Westerners won’t eat a lobster or crab that’s killed before it’s cooked. No doubt some Chinese think we are fools for believing dead fish is an acceptable substitute for live. Americans are already ridiculed for pretending frozen orange juice is any match for fresh squeezed. Who are Americans to opine on taste? For years we’ve eaten chickens fed on fishmeal, without realizing what Europeans could tell us from a table’s length away, American chicken smells fishy!
Now ask an American farmer about sweet corn and he’ll brag that it’s best boiled while still on the stalk. So there is consensus on a preference for fresh.
What constitutes fresh when we’re talking meat? If you ask a reptile or spider, it means live. Mammal predators kept at the zoo have to accustom themselves to eating pieces of steak where their nature is to grab from what’s on the run. What looks like Steak Tartar to us is what they usually leave to scavengers.
Has the human predator diet been converted to scavenger for the sake of convenience and civility?
In our contemporary quest for reclaiming nutrition, I’ll be curious to know if there’s a forbidden energy gone missing from our scavenged meals.
I’ll let the clip speak for itself about the inhumanity of devouring a meal as it looks on. And I’m really glad that no worse videos have emerged from China. As yet there are no Youtube videos of diners eating monkey brains straight from the skull of a live monkey strapped to the table, nor of the infamous “three squeals” delicacy of live rat fetuses.
Yeah. My empathy kicks in when viewing actions I can do nothing about. So I didn’t watch. That reminded me of my brief encounter with a book I didn’t actually read “Saving Fish From Drowning”
This one makes me wish that the Buddhists and the Hindus have a remote chance of being right about Karma and Dharma. Imagine one of these Delightful Diner patrons being pulled from a boat and eaten alive by fish… oh, wait, that sounds like the plot from Jaws.
Then there’s the New Communism or whatever the nom-du-jour for it is in China today. There are people who are very rich and there are the Others. Greed is good, yes? BBC had a headline yesterday about “black clinics” in China. The Capitalist Communism routine has gotten to the point, according to Beijing, where the Rich have real clinics, privatized clinics… and the poor have clinics stocked with Mystery Drugs and staffed by people who for some reason or another aren’t allowed to practice medicine.
The Beijing Government is closing down the “black clinics” as quickly as they find them. And prosecuting the “offenders”.
The patients there are usually the Laborers brought in to the cities to do contract labor (like me working out of the Slave Market and busting up my feet) for the (mostly American) Corporate Invaders.
I’m curious if our Resident Capitalist is going to crow that it’s Trickle Down in action, and, it most certainly is. The American who translated that saying i got off the Red Cross Brand dynamite box into Chinese for me, is working in Wuxi as a consultant, says he can go to one of the State clinics and get excellent care for under $10 USD. So these Workers the Capitalists rescued with their wonderful Free Market Opportunity, and can’t even afford $10 to go to a REAL clinic, yep… I guess that really does explain the Success Of Capitalism even more scathingly than I can.
The guys who go to those “black clinics” probably never eat in restaurants, far less one where they’ll serve such gourmet delights.
The Very Rich remind me very much of the Roman rich.
Oh, sure, if you were a Free Citizen in Rome, you had it good, as long as you didn’t offend somebody of higher rank who could have you crucified on the spot. Of course, it was based on Slavery and the slaves had a not-so-good lifestyle, and got to watch hungrily as their masters gorged themselves on finest wines and (aged) dormouse and Hummingbird Tongue, gorged themselves till they could eat no more, go puke it up and go right back to eating.
They had slaves to clean up the vomit too. It’s a nice comparison and I suppose the Capitalists here would rather not have to think about how closely THEIR OWN “dream society” will mirror the Romans and the Imperial Court of China both officially and now, under so-called “Communism”. unofficially.