"Many of my friends are curious about what we eat [in space] and think that the astronauts must have some expensive delicacies, like shark's fin or abalone," he wrote. "Actually we ate quite normal food, there is no need to keep it a secret," he added. He listed a menu including braised chicken, steamed fish and dog meat from Huajiang county in Guangdong, which is famed for its nutritional benefits in China.
A local proverb in the south of China is that "Huajiang dog is better for you than ginseng", referring to the medicinal root that plays a vital role in traditional Chinese medicine. He added that the diet had been specially drawn up for the astronauts by Chinese nutritionists and that the food had been purchased from special suppliers in Beijing. Dog is widely eaten in northern China, where it is believed to help battle the winter cold. The menu was still in use last year, when Chinese astronauts conducted their first ever spacewalk. China has plans to land a man on the moon by 2020.
The revelation drew an angry rebuke from animal rights campaigners, who said Mr Yang was setting a bad example to his millions of fans. "Yang Liwei is a role model for so many young people and he is one of China's greatest heroes," said Jill Robinson, the founder of Animals Asia. "We hope that he might recognise dogs as the heroes they are too: they found survivors after the Sichuan earthquake and protected people from potential terrorists during the Olympic games. Surely they deserve more."
7 comments:
I'm not surprised the outraged reaction in this article comes from a person named Jill Robinson. A westerner cannot spot the hypocrisy in eating pork but calling eating dog an animal rights violation.
You can really taste the retriever!
What Insolitus said.
The problem is, people don't realize that some asians originally ate dog due to poverty and starvation. Now for some it's just an accquired taste or tradition.
I'll go with Insolitus. The common pig has a relational intelligence comparative to a 6 - 8 year old. And it is our fodder.
Personally, in my eyes, it is a pity that we need to resort to any killing at all to feed ourselves. In all honesty, there is more than enough to go around.
I find it somewhat ironic that they've got the science and technology to put men into space, and yet they're clinging to superstitions about the benefits of dog meat.
Nothing in the article indicates the people in the Chinese space program have superstitions about dog meat, they only say it has nutritional benefits - which may very well be true. Since dogs resemble us more than, for example, chickens do, I find it easy to imagine dog meat better matching our nutritional requirements.
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