Bizarre!

She dredged it up just to make sure I knew my place in the grand scheme of things.

'Dog is a winter food and made into soup I am told...'

And in Shanghai I also saw lots of beautifully groomed dogs walking with their owners with top knots with pink bows and lots of well looked after felines as well. Plenty of pet grooming shops around as well. I didn't see any animals tied up waiting for the dinner table outside restaurants, but I did see a live duck in a bag on the train - and can only guess. I asked and was shown the symbol for dog on menus and avoided those restaurants which advertised it.

All pretty easy really.

"And it's even possible that without a whole lot of effort, you'll see one of these beasts ... beheaded, gutted, and drained of blood... it has always been a common sight on, say, the streets of Wan Chai."

- Forget Wan Chai, it was a common sight in my parents' backyard in suburban Australia in the '50s. I usually got to do the plucking, and if I was unlucky the gutting too. But those home-raised chickens were much more tasty than today's supermarket birds, even the ones sold as "free range". (I'm pretty sure I'm not imagining that.)

I've never quite got used to the term "free range". It always conjures up images of herds of muscular chickens galumphing across the western plains.

Some old threads are fun to revisit.

In Chiang Mai, we went to a market as part of a cooking class and saw a pig's head displayed snout up, and another animal - some kind of boar maybe? - also snout up (see links), plus some tongues, intestines, and lots of insects. And in Luang Prabang, we saw some plucked whole chickens in the street market. All fascinating, we thought. Didn't see any dogs/cats (except wandering the streets).

http://kbutler1122.zenfolio.com/p632...1227#h2b1b1227

http://kbutler1122.zenfolio.com/p632...5e08#h37025e08

http://kbutler1122.zenfolio.com/p632...374a#h2c63374a

http://kbutler1122.zenfolio.com/p701...e61f#h3107e61f

Goodness what search did I type in! did not look at date! Ha!