MCLC: eating tiger meat

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: sean macdonald <smacdon2005 at gmail.com>
Subject: eating tiger meat
***********************************************************

The zhiguai tradition continued in the lithographs of Wu Youru that
depicted everyday sights and strange, offbeat news articles about China
and the West. This story is an example of one stream of Western
journalistic sensationalism that has been posted around the internet for a
couple of weeks at least. I first saw a headline that read something like
"Rich Chinese Enjoying Tiger Meat" and my mind misread "Red" for "Rich."
Rich is the new "Red." I guess "oligarch" is a slip-over from similar
language in English employed to describe wealthy Russians, which might be
more telling of the messengers than the people described.

Still, I am skeptical of the correlative logic behind consuming the
by-products of tigers, endangered or zoo'ed. And I believe the
perpetrators of such culinary ritual slaughters should really get down and
dirty. At least they could do a Wu Song and down a few bowls of wine and
fight the tiger with their bare hands. Electrocution hardly seems like it
would produce a very positive medicine.

All the best,

Sean

===================================================

Source: The Daily Beast (3/31/14):
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/31/why-do-chinese-oligarchs-s
ecretly-love-illegal-tiger-meat.html

 
Why Do Chinese Oligarchs Secretly Love Illegal Tiger Meat?
Jake Adelstein 

 
A forbidden practice becomes popular among China’s ruling class: watching
the animals die before eating them.

 
China’s wealthy “dragons” like to dine on tigers. In fact, they’ll even
watch them die first and then boast about it on social media.

Unfortunately, police don’t consider this behavior worth “liking” and so
it became the center of a scandal last week when authorities busted an
illegal tiger-eating dinner club in Guangdong province.

 
According to a March 26 report in the state-run regional newspaper the
Nanfang Daily, police crashed the party of wealthy businessmen and
government officials in the city of Leizhou just as they prepared to
nibble on a freshly slaughtered cat. The raid occurred after a drunken
dinner guest accidentally posted several grisly pictures of the event on
social media, the Nanfang Daily reported.

 
The story has shone a light on the practice of killing the endangered
animals for use in Chinese medicine and for sale to the country’s nouveaux
riche, who prize tiger products as both a status symbol and a smart
investment.

 
The Taiwanese press first wrote about such dinners in January of this year
following a similar incident, when pictures
<http://www.recordchina.co.jp/gallery.php?gid=82134&type=0&p=1#t> of a
freshly butchered tiger appeared on a Chinese micro-blogging service. At
the time, authorities in Leizhou denied the reports, asserting that the
newspaper had been the victim of a hoax.

 
But the existence of underground markets selling tiger in Guangdong has
long been an open secret. In 2007, according to the state-run paper the
People’s Daily, authorities stopped a truck smuggling tigers into the
province, saving at least three of the animals. In 2010, police discovered
tiger fur and bones in a truck.

 
The Nanfang Daily’s article claims that the feasts serve as both
entertainment and an ostentatious display of wealth for the Chinese elite
who want to impress their connections and clients.

 
In China, tigers are considered symbols of courage, bravery, and strength.
Traditional Chinese doctors prescribe tiger bones, eyeballs, and other
parts to treat a variety of ailments ranging from poor eyesight to
impotence. “Tiger Feasts” are allegedly quite popular amongst corrupt
government officials and elite businessmen who believe consuming the big
cats improves performance across a wide range of activities from the
boardroom to the bedroom.

 
According to Chinese media reports, smugglers deliver the tranquilized
animals by truck to secret locations where the party’s hosts invite their
customers and friends for an impromptu dinner theater.

 
Organizers hire professional butchers, who receive around $170 per
appearance, to slaughter the animal for the diners’ delectation, before
carefully chopping up and packaging its remains for sale on the black
market. One veteran tiger butcher, who was turned into the authorities,
was reported to have killed more than ten tigers since 2007. In a
particularly dramatic denouement, the butcher presiding over the busted
party at Leizhou died after jumping out of a window in an attempt to evade
arrest, according to the Nanfang Daily.

A Nanfang Television news report posted
<http://video.sina.com.cn/v/b/129590965-1446014322.html> on Chinese web
portal Sina, includes a 2012 video showing one such butcher repeatedly
electrocuting a tiger. The animal falls to the floor of its tiny steel
cage, where it lies twitching. Several men then butcher the carcass on top
of a blue tarp.

According to sources in Japan with knowledge of the events, after revelers
watch the tiger die, they indulge in a feast including such delicacies as
tiger steak and ginger-infused tiger penis soup.

It is believed that smugglers bring some of the tigers into Guangdong from
Vietnam, though it’s also possible that some of the tigers are
domestically raised.

Wild tigers are rare in China, with some varieties now believed to be
extinct. What was thought to be the last wild Indochinese tiger in China
was killed and eaten by a man who was sentenced to 12 years in jail in
2009.

 
While eating endangered animals may be in bad taste, as it were, it’s not
always illegal. China’s State Council banned the production and use of
traditional Chinese medicine containing tiger bones in 1993, but it is
legal to breed the animals, and at least 150 companies have received
authorization from China’s Forestry Administration to sell the parts,
including skins, of tigers that die in captivity, according to a report
<http://issuu.com/eia1984/docs/eia_hidden_in_plain_sight_-_med_res?e=179452
4/1568870#search> by the Environmental Investigation Agency. “Tiger farms”
in several parts of the country raise the animals and display them to
eager tourists. At the moment it’s estimated there are several thousand
tigers being raised in captivity. But the animals are not supposed to be
slaughtered for the dinner table.

 
Although tiger-derived merchandise must be accompanied with a certificate
from the agency, merchants routinely use forged documents and legal
loopholes to “launder” wild tiger parts and sell them on the open market.
A report in the Daily Mail
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-441632/the-factory-farm-tigers-tur
ned-wine.html> says that authorities wink at the practice and may even
take a cut of the illegal trade. Even government officials sometimes
receive tiger products as presents. Since China's President Xi Jin Ping
took office in 2013, the country has begun a crackdown on such office
"perks," which have provoked an outrage among Chinese citizens for years.
The resulting slowdown in sales has led to a cooling effect on China’s
demand for luxury watches, expensive liquor, and other products associated
with the high life. And yet, the market for tiger parts is doing “grrreat.”

 
Tiger bones routinely sell for a thousand dollars per jin, a Chinese unit
of weight just over one pound. Liquor made by soaking tiger bones in
Chinese wine brings hefty prices on online exchanges. On Sunday, the site
Jiutouwang <http://www.jiutw.com/shop_item_detail.aspx?id=35584>  (Wine
Investor’s Network) listed a 500 ml bottle of tiger bone wine for 100,000
RMB or about $16,000 USD.

 
Ren Yabuki, Executive Director of the NGO Life Investigation Agency
(Tokyo, Japan), which researches and campaigns against increasingly
serious illegal wildlife trade and animal cruelty, notes that, “There are
currently estimated to be 50 wild tigers left in China; it’s probably only
a matter of time before they are all extinct. The area where the tigers
are being eaten has a long cultural history of feasting on exotic
creatures, thus the moral hurdle is probably low. In recent years, as
China’s wealthy class have grown, people keep seeking ways to assert their
superiority via their wealth, and paying large amounts of money to dine on
endangered species is one way this is done. It’s greed expressed as
appetite.” Yabuki also notes that as tigers go extinct throughout the
world, China sees raising them as a good business opportunity.

 
On the other hand, state controlled media reports on the illegal “tiger
feasts” emphasized their decadence and disregard for the rule of law,
suggesting that the bust may be part of a broader crackdown on vice in
Guangdong. In a separate incident in mid-February, police drew massive
criticism after rounding up hundreds of sex workers in the province’s
capital. Picking on the tiger butchers is more likely to gain public
support.

 
Benjamin Dooley contributed to this report.