i ate dog again

admin — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 19:21:06 +0000

I willingly ate a dog skewer this weekend. I jokingly said to the street vendor “gourou” and he grabbed a skewer and put it on the grill. it looked like lamb. i was sort of curious to try it when i knew what i was eating so i didn’t stop him. this sort of thing takes on a life of its own. There’s something almost sexually deviant in eating things youre not supposed to eat. Like putting something where it shouldn’t go. There’s an excitement to it in any case.

And i dont know how to say “just kidding” in chinese.

i dont know if there’s a word for joking.

the chinese do not have a rich tradition of joking.

“you say you want gourou, you eat gourou!”

It was pretty good.

i’m back in LA in two weeks. my friend felix says he must eat it once per week. imagine if i’m out at 3am, cruising the streets of monterrey park and alhambra, looking for dogmeat like a junkie might look for heroin.

Part of what i’m experiencing is what anthropologists call “going native”. The stress involved in being in another culture and country, the pressure to conform to the local standards– it may be all of this however I have not really tried to conform in any other ways. I guess to me eating dog is the crown jewel of cultural weirdness here, in my mind, and I did it to pay some sort of penance. The way Greeks visiting Rome may have allowed themselves to be apart of barbaric and painful blood rituals in order to show affinity.

Also, as mentioned, it tastes pretty good.

a serious HK journalist being culturally insensitive

My Red China » dogmeat

i ate dog again