Asians Eat Pets

Why is there a cat's head if he is eating its gizzards? Also, cats don't have gizzards.

"So when I told the Cracked editors I wanted to write a drunken adventure story, they were skeptical. 'Can't you just write another story about why it's hard for a Chinese woman to own cats?' (Point #1: You are always tempted to eat them.)"

— Christina H, "5 Reasons I Wrote the Drunkest Column Ever"

One of the most common stereotypical food dishes for East Asian, and Southeastern Asian countries is the flesh from dogs and cats. This is usually done to convey how different Asian cultures are from the rest of the world since cynophagy is considered taboo in the West. The only country that seems to get a break from this is Japan, and even then, eating domesticated pets isn't illegal there. Some could also argue that eating dogs and cats isn't any worse than eating rabbits, cattle, chickens, and pigs, as all of these can be raised as pets or as livestock just like dogs and cats.

This is Truth in Television to an extent, as cynophagy is practiced in many Asian countries. In fact, China used to even have dog meat festivals until the Chinese government banned the commercial slaughter and sale of dogs for human consumption. However, this trope is often exaggerated by fictional stereotypes. Also, due to globalization and health concerns, many localities in these territories have been moving away from the consumption of these animals either unofficially or by law.

South and West Asian people are usually stereotyped the opposite way due to both cultures being known for religious dietary restrictions. For example, Islam is famously particular about which meat is halal (clean) and haram (unclean), dogs and cats both falling under the latter category. Likewise many Hindus and Buddhists are vegetarian, and even those who aren't tend to avoid beef in particular, so eating weird animals is not associated with them either (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom notwithstanding).

This trope is considered outdated to the point of being a Dead Horse Trope^note Funny enough, on the emphasis "horse," Chinese people and Koreans rarely eat horse meat, while Japanese and Mongolian people do. As mentioned above, a lot of countries in Asia have outlawed the consumption of pet meat, especially since the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic, when it was suspected that the virus originated from a fish market in China. A good majority of these examples are just Asian characters being teased about eating pet meat, or a vibe to not go to Asian restaurants because of the possibility of eating pet meat. Many relatively "straight" examples of this trope seem to come from Vietnam War era depictions. Due to Values Dissonance, if a work were to play this trope straight now, it would be heavily criticized. These days, one is more likely to see this stereotype brought up to display a non-Asian character's ignorance and/or racism.

Sub-Trope of Foreign Queasine, since it's almost always non-Asian works making this joke. Almost always overlaps with Exotic Entree. Expect I Ate WHAT?! after someone eats a particular Asian meat dish if they manage to accidentally consume dog, cat, or other pet meat.

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Examples:

Advertising

• In this old commercial for the Czech Internet portal centrum.cz, a couple go to a Chinese restaurant. The lady hands her pug to the waiter and says: "Will you take care of Bobík for me?" The waiter misinterprets this as an instruction to have the dog cooked, and poor Bobík gets served up to the couple. Cue a horrified scream from the lady.

Anime & Manga

• In Codename: Sailor V, there is a part where Minako goes to China and a very stereotypical Chinese villainess threatens to eat Artemis (who is a magic talking cat). In the same scene, it cuts to Natsuna Sakurada (back in Japan) talking to Wakagi about Minako's trip to China and she mentions that there is a Chinese dish where they cook a cat whole.
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: In the episode "Runaway Tachikoma - ESCAPE FROM," the Tachikoma comes across a girl named Miki, who is searching for her dog Rocky. Tachikoma decides to help her search for her dog, and the two explore Niihama together. Miki gets hungry and wants to get a meat kabob from a vendor, but Tachikoma says she should probably reconsider after reading the sign that the vendor was cooking dog meat.
• Inubaka: Discussed by Kim, a Korean transfer student who initially fears dogs because dog-eating is common in his home country, and a lot of the local strays become feral as a result. One of them bit him badly enough to leave a scar, and this traumatized him. He eventually gets over his fear of dogs and end up adopting a Shiba puppy.
• Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple: When Kenichi and Miu imagine all the ways taking a stray kitten to the Ryozanpaku Dojo could go horribly wrong, one of their fears is that Kensei (the Chinese Kenpo master) might want to cook it. Kensei is suitably insulted when he learns this.
• In Ranma ½, quintessential Anime Chinese Girl Shampoo tries to serve up Akane's pet pig P-Chan (actually Ryōga) to Ranma while attempting to woo him. In a later story arc, her grandmother grabs P-Chan off the street and again tries to cook him.

Comedy

• Jasper Carrott did a stand-up show based on his experiences of visiting British Hong Kong. He recalls ending up in Kowloon with a mixed group of British expats and attending a Chinese restaurant where, owing to the language barrier, his party were reduced to ordering by pointing at food items and nodding. Having established one guy wanted chicken, the waiter nodded at an underling, who went to a cage, brought out a live chicken, and despatched it on the spot with a meat cleaver. Another member of the group, via the same sort of mime and dumb-show, communicated that he wanted duck. Sure enough, a live duck was selected and despatched. At this point, a stray dog walked down the street. Jasper claims he screamed at the group For God's sake, nobody point at the labrador! Ignore it!

Comic Books

• American Born Chinese:
  • During Jin Wang's first day of school, Timmy, a white classmate, mentions how his mom told him that Chinese people eat dogs. The teacher, who is also white, tells Timmy that Jin probably doesn't do that, and assures him that he and his family stopped doing so after immigrating to the US, highlighting how hurtful anti-Asian beliefs manifest even in peers with no actual malice towards Jin. Later, another white classmate mocks Jin during lunch by suggesting that he's busy eating Lassie.
  • Walking Chinese stereotype Chin-Kee eats cat gizzards for lunch (Yes, we know cats don't have gizzards; it's a reference to a notorious anti-Chinese cartoon by the US editorial cartoonist Pat Oliphant).
• In one gag of Billy & Buddy, Boule and his parents unsuccessfully try to find a restaurant where they can have lunch, as they won't allow dogs in -thus, Bill. After a few rejections, the family try a Chinese restaurant, and the owner answers: "Of course, we accept dogs! We like dogs! In fact, we love them!" while looking at Bill so suspiciously that the latter run away.
• Lucky Luke: One Rantanplan story has Rantanplan be the Pet Heir to a large amount of property, including most of a Chinatown. This causes him to be variously abducted by the residents of the Chinatown to protest the rents and living conditions or taken by a restaurant to be made into lacquered coyote while still alive (Rantanplan thinks he's enjoying a sauna in a beauty salon). Meanwhile, the Daltons get involved (as they're next in the inheritance after Rantanplan) after Averell mentions he wanted to try eating dog, leading to the Chinese allying with the Daltons.
• Spirou & Fantasio :Up to parody levels each time Chinese mafia is involved. A Chinese cook is seen pursuing a dog with a rolling pin near the end of Vito la déveine, and Vito states you that you can't trust people who eat sliced dogs. In Luna fatale, a Chinese shop owner mistake Spip for a small dog, and states that "We Chinese people love dogs". In the New York album, members of the Triad actually try to eat Spip, "a tradition", according to them. The Chinese mafiosi are also often shown eating unusual animals such as snakes, jellyfishes, lizards, or scorpions.

Comic Strips

• Footrot Flats. One of the characters is Rangi Jones, a Maori kid whom the Dog worries is measuring him for a dogskin cloak, so one day he's going to wake up with his fur stretched on a rack while everything else is being cooked with vegetables in a pit oven for a hangi dinner.

Fan Works

• Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space. Before opening fire on an Asian invasion, Proton says as a Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: "Eat radium explosive, you dog-eating dogs!"

Films — Live-Action

• Barking Dogs Never Bite: This film lampoons, among other things, the Korean habit of eating dog (which is a true thing, although it's increasingly out of style). A man tries to kill a Mister Muffykins by locking it up in the basement of an apartment building. He thinks better of it and goes downstairs to release the dog, only to find that the building's handyman has killed the dog and made it into a stew.
• This is one of the many jokes in the Rapid-Fire Comedy Brain Donors:
  Lillian: Do you know dogs, Mister Melonchek?
  Rocco: Know dogs? I used to be a chef in a Korean restaurant!
• Referenced in Dick, where a frustrated Richard Nixon threatens to feed his dog Checkers to the Chinese unless it quiets down.
• In Gran Torino, the grumpy old man protagonist pesters his Hmong neighbors with dog-eating remarks. In turn Sue, the young neighbor, snarks they only do cats. He seems to be confused about whether or not to believe in the stereotype, but is willing to give them some trust over the matter. In the end, when his last will is read, it turns out he wished to leave his dog in their care on the condition they won't eat him.
• In China They Eat Dogs uses the concept in the title. The phrase also appears in the film, as an argument by one character against moral absolutism.
• Referenced in Jingle All the Way, when the Booster stuntman, wearing a heavy suit, complains that he's "sweating like a dog in a Chinese restaurant."
• Rush Hour: During the first film, Carter tells Lee that, as a Hong Kong policeman, he's a Fish out of Water in Los Angeles, saying "I'm Michael Jackson, you Tito.". In Rush Hour 2, they're in Hong Kong, where Lee says "In Hong Kong, I am Michael Jackson, you are Toto.", to which Carter says "You mean 'Tito'! Toto was what we ate last night for dinner!".
• When Triumph the Insult Dog visited Star Wars fans outside the premiere of Attack of the Clones, a Stormtrooper that he insulted threatened to cook and eat him; Triumph asked the Stormtrooper "What are you, a Korean guy?"

Jokes

• A new Chinese restaurant opens in front of a grocery store. A few days later, the restaurant owner goes to the store and asks for dog food. As the seller thinks Chinese don't have dogs, as they eat them; he suspects the dog food will be served to the customers of the restaurant. He asks:
  Seller: Do you have a dog, sir?
  Restaurant owner: Of course, I do.
  Seller: Can I see it then?

Puzzled, the Chinese man goes back to the restaurant, and comes back with his dog, at the end of a lead. The grocery guy then accepts to sell him dog food. A few days later, the restaurant owner is back at the grocery store, and asks for cat food. Once again, the seller suspects him to eat cats and is going to serve it to the customers.

Seller: Do you have a cat, sir?
Restaurant owner: Well, of course, I do.
Seller: Can I see it then?

The Chinese guy comes back a few minutes later with his cat in a carrier, and is then permitted to buy cat food. And a few days later, he comes back with a closed plastic container, puts it on the counter, and asks the seller to have a look inside. The latter opens the box, and is horrified to see that it contains human feces.

Seller:-Are you nuts? What does this mean?!

And the restaurant owner answers

Restaurant owner: Well, you seem to always ask for proof before selling anything, and today, I came to buy toilet paper.

Literature

• Alex Rider: Skeleton Key: A CIA agent Alex works with recalls the Company having once tried to spy on the Korean embassy with the gift of a cat equipped with surveillance equipment. Unfortunately the Koreans ate the cat.
• In Goldfinger, Bond frames Goldfinger's cat for destroying surveillance footage that would have shown Bond snooping around in Goldfinger's home. Goldfinger gives the cat to his Korean Dragon Oddjob to eat, noting that he'd developed a taste for cat during a famine.
• In The Hate U Give, Starr is starting to get fed up with Hailey's racism. Her friend Maya agrees and points out that freshman year, Hailey asked if Maya, who is Chinese, ate cat for Thanksgiving.
• In the first tome of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, one of the narrators quip that one of the reason to abandon a dog would be moving to a country where dog meat is eaten, like Korea.
• Invoked in the title of the satirical novel They Eat Puppies Dont They, in which a lobbyist hoping to get congressional approval for a new weapons system tries to drum up anti-Chinese sentiment.
• In her autobiography book Why Japanese have slanted eyes, the Mangaka Keiko Ichiguchi narrate her life in Italy, where she settled in 1993. She once wanted to own a dog, and her Italian husband showed her a classified ad in a newspaper, stating that a bunch of puppies were given for adoption. When Keiko Ichiguchi showed up in the front door of the dog's owner apartment and explained she came because of the classified ad, the Italian lady screamed: "Chinese eat dogs! I can't let you have one!" Startled, Keiko Ichiguchi corrected she did not eat dogs and was in fact Japanese. But the dog owner insisted that Japan was next to China and thus the same thing, and that Keiko Ichiguchi wanted a dog to eat it, before slamming her door in her face.

Live-Action TV

• An early episode of the drama China Beach had a startling instance of this stereotype played very straight in Vietnam. A new nurse notices a stall selling puppies. She signs that she wants one, and stopped paying attention as the seller picked up the dog. She is horrified to be handed a paper bag that seemed wet, as the puppy had been killed for cooking purposes.
• Firefly depicts a solar system settled by an alliance of the Anglosphere and China. In "Serenity", a street food vendor is briefly shown with cuts of meat on a grill, with a sign above it reading "Good Dogs" in English and Mandarin.
• Full Frontal parodied a then-running TV series involving a talking dog by having the main character wander onto the set of Iron Chef with fatal results.
• In The Goodies and the Beanstalk the grand prize for climbing the beanstalk is 5000 puppies which, if no-one claims the prize, will all be given to Indian restaurants.
• In the Late Night with Conan O'Brien segment "Conan O'Brien Hates My Homeland", the entry for Korea was:
  Your biggest natural resource is coal, which gives dog a nice, smokey flavor.
• M*A*S*H:
  • In one episode, Hawkeye is away from the camp and suffers a mild concussion. Taking refuge with a Korean family, he monologues non-stop in order to stay awake, as he knows falling asleep after the head injury is a bad idea. He has to talk to himself, as none of them speak English. At the end of the episode, he returns to their home to thank them. Joining them for a meal, the episode ends with this:
    Hawkeye: Dinner? Great! What's this? Meat? Where did you get meat? Wait a minute. Where's the dog? [dog barks offscreen, to Hawkeye's obvious relief]
  • In one episode, "Mad Dogs and Servicemen," Radar is bitten by a local dog that he'd been feeding on the sly. When Col. Blake points out that rabies is a very real concern, they try to find the animal to determine if it's rabid. But when they ask one Korean family about the dog, they say something in Korean which they quickly learn means "dog stew."
    Col. Blake: Radar, they took your dog home in a people bag!
• My Hero: In "Pet Rescue", George mentions visiting a restaurant that served dog while travelling through Asia.
• In an episode of the third season of the German children's television series Die Pfefferkörner, the character Vivi has an argument with Xiaomeng, nicknamed Panda. As Panda is Chinese, one of her insults is suspecting him to try to eat her beloved dog. He doesn't.
• When Lucy Liu hosted Saturday Night Live, her monologue took a crack at several Asian stereotypes. At one point, she serves the cast members her recipe for cocker spaniel. The cast members are disgusted... except for Horatio Sanz.
• Used for a story in Would I Lie to You?; Lee Mack had to claim that in a restaurant in China, he unwittingly ordered and ate dog. (It was a lie.)

Magazines

• MAD Magazine:
  • In one issue, there were a series of charts called "Cause or Coincidence?" showing possibly-linked trends; one showed the cat population of the US decreasing, and another showed the number of Chinese restaurants in the US increasing at the same rate.
  • Issue 166 from 4/74 had a feature on how to "Eat Out and Lose Weight," which suggested dining in settings where you're likely to lose your appetite, such as a seat within smelling range of the men's room. One idea said to enter Chinese restaurants through the kitchen; the illustration depicted a cat about to be slaughtered.

Music

• Asians are not spared from Anal Cunt's frequently racist lyrics: one of their songs is titled "I Sold Your Dog to a Chinese Restaurant," while "You Own a Store" contains the line "Hide your dogs, hide your cats."
• The parody song "Cats in the Kettle" (frequently attributed to "Weird Al" Yankovic, but was actually written by Bob Rivers or Aaron Wilburn):
  There's a cat in the kettle at the Peking Moon
  The place that I eat everyday at noon
  They could feed you cat and you'll never know
  Once they wrap it up in dough, boys
  They fry it real crisp in dough

Theater

• In 1904, a man named Truman Hunt brought a group of locals from the Philippines over to the United States to perform as part of a traveling Human Zoo show. One of the most infamous parts of the show was when the performers, who were portrayed closer to Hollywood Natives than stereotypical Asians, would take a dog brought to the show from the local pound, roast it alive and eat it. Since this act was inspired by this trope as opposed to actual Filipino customs, the performers were not used to eating contaminated stray dog meat on a daily basis, and as a result many fell ill with some even dying from food poisoning.

Video Games

• Used as a [possible] morbid sight gag in Silent Hill 3, one of the keys you have to get to progress through the game is found inside of a roasted dog served on a platter in a Chinese restaurant. Granted, this being found in the Dark World version of a shopping mall, it's evidently not something any ordinary people placed there.

Web Original

• The "Poodles with Noodles" Urban Legend, which revolves around a wealthy foreign couple checking into a restaurant in Hong Kong with their expensive poodle, and tried ordering a meal for themselves and their pet. But due to Language Barrier issues, the restaurant instead cooks their dog and serves it to them.

Web Videos

• The Boys ^note JoshDub, Mully, EddieVR, Juicy, SwaggerSouls: In a video, JoshDub finds a cat (named "Snuggles") cooking in the oven. SwaggerSouls asks "I thought we were ordering Chinese; why are we making it?"
• The Nostalgia Critic:
  • In his review of Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, when Ian threatens to send the Chipettes to a restaurant that serves roasted chipmunk, Critic questions if it's a Korean place.
  • In his review of Yogi Bear, when at the end Yogi steals three picnic tables, one of which has a dog, Critic imitates Yogi and says "We're gonna eat the dog, too! Korean food tonight!"
• SuperMarioLogan: Jackie Chu frequently mentions eating dog for dinner. In one video, he even laments about how expensive it is to buy dogs from the pet store for dinner everyday.
• Thdubya, whose youtube channel parodies differnt national anthems, has these lines in his parody of "March of the Volunteers" (China's National Anthem):
  '51 we conquered one of our weak neighbours:
  Tibet!
  If you speak of them we will:
  Deep fry your pet, make you forget, censor your internets!

Western Animation

• There was an episode of Detective Bogey where the detective goes to a Chinese (or maybe other oriental) restaurant with his client. The client orders some dish, starts eating, then notices some cute puppy walking around. He says "Nice Dog," and the owner tells him "That the brother of the -dish name-."
• Family Guy:
  • In a deleted scene from the episode "Tiegs for Two," Mr. Washee Washee comes to the Griffin household for dinner. Stewie teases Brian (who is a dog) and says that he bets that Mr. Washee Washee thinks Brian is what's for dinner. Brian says that's a racist stereotype, however, Mr. Washee Washee jokes about eating Brian for dinner, which leads the latter to run in a panic.
  • In "Dog Gone", Brian holds an animal rights meeting and points out that people eat dogs in some Asian countries. However, this only makes the attendees curious as to what dog tastes like and decide to eat him.
  • In "Road to the Multiverse," when Stewie and Brian end up stranded in a universe where humans are pets to anthropomorphic dogs, Brian meets the dog versions of the Griffins and claims that Stewie is his pet human, Gabe. Stewie mutters under his breath that he hopes the next universe they go to is all Koreans.
  • In "Candy Quahog Marshmallow," one of the lyrics to Peter, Cleveland, and Joe's pop song that they put on to convince Quagmire not to stay in Korea is "You really love pussy, they eat dog."
• In the King of the Hill episode "Westie Side Story", the Souphanousinphone family, originally from Laos, moves in next to the Hills. Hank and his friends, especially Dale, worry if the stereotype about Asians eating dogs is true. Their suspicions aren't helped when Bobby Hill and Connie Souphanousinphone try and fail to get their families' dogs — Ladybird and Doggie respectively — to be friends, resulting in them running off and going missing right before a local barbecue. The Stinger has Minh trying out Peggy's various foods, but gets disgusted with her rabbit stew, stating rednecks will eat anything.^note Rabbit meat is not considered a delicacy in Asia outside of China
• Robot Chicken: A Running Gag throughout Season 1 involves an animal or animal-like character walking down an alley and getting snatched by a Chinese chef.

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