Two blocks down the street from our hotel, we saw it. The setting sun was still bright enough to illuminate the two large blue characters painted on a white sign mounted on top of a dilapidated building on the edge of Hunchun: 狗场, Gouchang.
The translation of the two characters was not immediately obvious. We knew the character for dog: 狗, gou. We also knew the character 场, chang, meant “field” or “area.” We decided that the sign likely said something along the lines of “Dog Pen.”
On one hand, those two characters were exactly what we expected to see. While some government actions and municipal bans have in recent years attempted to curtail the trade and consumption of dog meat in China, the practice endures in the country’s rural areas. Upon entering Hunchun, a city of 200,000 in Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture—part of China’s Northeast Jilin province and sandwiched between the borders of Russia and North Korea—it was clear that we were in one such area.
Our hotel was on the outskirts of the city. The paved road that led us there turned to gravel at the entrance to our parking lot, leading to a ragtag collection of warehouses and garages. In contrast to the Chinese metropolises of Shanghai or Beijing where English signage is common, we found the signs of Hunchun written first in Chinese, then in Russian, then in Korean—our international language relegated to the fourth tier in this corner of the Chinese hinterland.
On the other hand, we Americans still struggled to comprehend what we were seeing. The concept of a thriving market for dog meat seemed simply outlandish. Surely, whatever rumors we had heard about the dog trade were based on apocryphal stereotypes and could never exist in rapidly modernizing China. How could a country pushing so quickly into the future also hold, what was, to our preconceived notions, such a morally reprehensible echo of the past?
In Hunchun, however, we were forced to put our perceptions aside and reckon with the reality right in front of us: 狗场, Gouchang. Drawn in by those mysterious characters, my friend John and I walked across the street to investigate.
We crept across a courtyard between the building and the street. The smell hit us halfway to the door. I’ll never forget it. I gagged and my hair stood on end as we collided with the wall of stench. We persisted, inching closer. We could now see that the door was ajar. The smell was only growing stronger. Hesitant to go in immediately, we peered through the window to its left.
Cupping our hands to the window, we surveyed the building’s dank interior. The carcass was the first thing I saw. Sprawled out on a waist-high table, it was a gory sight: skinned and dismembered, but still unmistakably canine. John and I recoiled as we registered what we were seeing. The only words I could get out of my mouth were an instinctual “Oh my God.”
John kept his head better than me. His face solemn, he moved away from the window and started to pull open the door. Recovering, I joined him as he slowly stepped through the entryway to survey the room. Bathed in the dim light of a few naked, incandescent lightbulbs, it was hard to discern exactly what we were seeing. Adding to the confusion was the smell, now almost unbearable. John whipped out his phone to start taking pictures.
“Ben” he said, breathless, “I see them.”
Suddenly we heard yelling in Chinese: Who’s there?
John put his phone away and we dashed out the door. Running across the courtyard back to the gravel road. Eventually, we slowed to a walk, silent as we processed the incident. John pulled out his phone to look at the pictures he took. Now, he was speechless. He turned his phone towards me while covering his face with his other hand. I squinted to make out what was on the screen. The darkness of the room made the picture look grainy, like found footage of Bigfoot, but I could still clearly see what caused John’s reaction. In the back of the room were four-legged figures packed into rickety, wire pens. Real. Live. Dogs.
At that point, the scale of the operation became clear. This was a building where dogs were raised, slaughtered, and butchered to be sold. The practice, utterly alien to us Americans, was common enough in Hunchun that it could be advertised in big characters on the side of the street. Far from catering to tourists looking to exploit the shock factor of the practice, the building’s run-down appearance and remote location made it clear that its existence was purely functional. It stood as a physical manifestation of an aspect of rural culture that most Americans, and indeed, most cosmopolitan Chinese people living in First-Tier cities, would prefer to pretend didn’t exist.
The exact history of the dog meat trade in China is debated. Some claim that the practice of consuming dogs is a recent development, only gaining popularity as the illegal stealing and killing of guard dogs in rural areas pushed down the price of the meat. These scholars emphasize that the consumption of dog meat is exceedingly uncommon in China and is opposed by most people. There are reasons to doubt this conclusion, however. Not only did we witness firsthand what was clearly an operating dog farm in Hunchun, but there is also evidence of dog farms operating in China as early as 1897 and festivals celebrating the meat’s consumption have been held as many as 600 years ago. The classic historical work the Shiji notes that Liu Bang, the founder of the Han dynasty, was particularly fond of dog meat. There is even a dish called “Fanfu Dog Meat”—which allegedly originated from Liu Bang’s general Fan Kuai, himself formerly a butcher specializing in dog meat—with a saying attributed to the dish that “狗肉滚三滚，神仙站不稳,” “When dog meat boils three times, even immortals cannot sit still.” Lastly, while most Chinese people today do indeed oppose the dog trade, a significant minority still support it, especially among the ethnic Korean population in the northeast.
Of course, when it comes to the actual regulation of dog meat consumption, the Chinese Communist Party’s view is the only one that matters. Analyzing party officials’ justification of dog meat consumptions is surprisingly revelatory of the CCP’s approach to China’s development and modernization. A particularly illuminating example is the press release issued when Shenzhen became the first Chinese city to ban the consumption of dog meat in 2020. The document cites “the requirements and spirit of modern human civilization” (人类文明的要求和体现)as justification for the ban and also notes that more-developed Hong Kong and Taiwan banned dog meat consumption long ago. Earlier, in 2009, there was a proposal to ban dog meat nationally as part of a drafted animal welfare law, though this draft ultimately was tabled.
The concept of 文明 (wenming) or civility has deep roots in Chinese culture, as it can be traced back to the 3000-year-old Yijing, or The Classic of Changes, a foundational philosophical text. China commentator Kaiser Kuo gives a succinct description of the term’s meaning in this ancient context, asserting that wenming refers to “the patterns that emerge from the [author’s] observation of heaven, earth, and human behavior—an ordered luminosity that distinguishes the cultivated person and the well-ordered society from those that lack such discernment.”
The fact that wenming is core to the CCP’s economic and social development initiatives shows the party’s intention to slowly move Chinese society to the state of order associated with civility through development. The reference to Hong Kong and Taiwan, along with other party rhetoric about development, reveals exactly what this state of wenming looks like to the current slate of party leaders. Striving to achieve the “Chinese Dream of great rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation” (中华民族伟大复兴的中国梦)has been a hallmark of Xi Jinping’s tenure in office, and is widely understood to refer to China’s return to the pinnacle of global economic, technological, and military power. Hong Kong and Taiwan have historically enjoyed higher levels of economic development and international prestige than the mainland. Their reference in the press release thus implies that the pursuit of wenming is equivalent to pursuing the goal of moving China towards the paramount position on the world stage and restoring the locus of China’s international prestige back to the mainland.
In an ironic acknowledgment of the West’s influence on global culture and norms, the CCP has decided that the populations of global superpowers do not eat dog meat, and thus dog meat is not wenming. Inevitably though, the achievement of wenming will look different to different people, and there is no universal standard of civility. In a place like Hunchun, eating dog meat could be perfectly in line with well-ordered society, even if it’s taboo in the West. In China, however, the CCP has the final say on what is or isn’t wenming, meaning which set of cultural values informs the country’s development trajectory is ultimately determined by party leadership rather than the Chinese people. Under the guise of furthering civility, unique aspects of different regions of China may gradually fade away. A massive, diverse country risks its sense of self as it conforms to a manicured image explicitly designed to increase China’s prestige and influence abroad.
Despite the surprise, fear, and discomfort I felt after seeing the Gouchang in Hunchun, I recognize the episode as a unique window into a culture different from my own. These experiences are why I travel in the first place. The modernization reforms implemented by the CCP will undoubtedly improve the lives of millions of Chinese, but at the same time, something will be lost. I feel grateful I got to experience a remnant of rural Chinese culture while it is still here.
Edited by John Steinmetz and Anya Acharya