The pinned comment to this video is where a lot of the meat is. It's worth a read all on its own, but in it he argues that the farmed-wildlife trade, not wet markets, are really the questionable...
The pinned comment to this video is where a lot of the meat is. It's worth a read all on its own, but in it he argues that the farmed-wildlife trade, not wet markets, are really the questionable practice we should be discussing. While yes, the wildlife was often then sold at wet markets, the vast majority of wet markets did not participate.
Additionally, he talks about how traditional Chinese medicine plays a large part of the demand for farmed-wildlife, and does a good job giving a nuanced take on that. Finally, he talks about changes and criticisms he thinks are in fact reasonable, which he didn't really get to in the video.
TL;DR: Read the pinned comment on the video. It's very good (if wordy).
(Agreed - I'll copy paste it here to make it a bit easier)
(Agreed - I'll copy paste it here to make it a bit easier)
Ok, so there’s a lot that I wanted to touch on in this video that I didn’t really get the chance to. This video presents a more normalized view of neighborhood wet markets, which I think’s a solid starting point for discussion… but a lot of nuance was lost. So I’ll try my best to make it up here.
There’s still a bit of a mystery surrounding the origins of COVID-19. While we now know that the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan wasn’t the ultimate source, if I was a betting man I’d still put my money on it originating somewhere within the farmed-wildlife-industry supply chain here (with maybe one long shot chip on ‘improper handling of waste material’ at the nearby coronavirus research station in Wuhan). But it took a decade for them to figure out where SARS came from, so I wouldn’t necessarily hold my breath. So for the purposes of this, let’s assume that it did indeed come from the farmed-wildlife industry here.
Before we get down to brass tax, it needs to be noted that in February the government banned basically the entirety of the farmed-wildlife industry. To us that’re living here in China, that’s old news. There was a lot of commotion about it on social media. There’s big red banners put up that we shouldn’t eat weird animals. If you look at the electric sign behind me at 3:30 one of the things that it’s communicating is that wild animals are a no-go. Again, this’s just some basic knowledge that a lot of people in the West that’re forming opinions about the issue seem to… not know. So there you go. Farmed wildlife is banned. So no more giant salamander, no more bamboo rat. C’est la guerre, but I think it had to be done.
Now, a lot of people tend to dismiss that, and say ‘the Chinese government banned the wildlife trade after SARS’, but here it is again. But there’s a distinction. After SARS, the government banned the wildlife trade – this was (likely) due to the farmed-wildlife trade. Now, being upset that the farmed-wildlife industry was even a thing would be, I think, a relatively reasonable position to hold. If these media blowhards said “we demand an apology for the existence of farmed-wildlife, it was banned far too late”, I say ‘lol good luck’ (CCP ain’t big apologizers) but I wouldn’t view that as an outside of reality kind of demand. But the farmed-wildlife trade is an… interesting nut.
Now, about actually eating wildlife. The Chinese diet is a lot more… diverse than the American diet when it comes to protein sources, that’s true. I remember once I asked a buddy of mine why he was moving back to Guangzhou after working a number of years in NYC, and he quickly retorted, “I don’t want to eat boneless, skinless, chicken breast my whole life”. That’s not entirely fair, but there’s an element of truth to that too. Hell, there’s some people I know in the USA that find chicken thigh to be too ‘gamey’. Here… stuff like rabbit, frog, snake, turtle, and goose are on the menu. I love food, so I personally find that diversity to be a good thing.
But then you get all these fucks that go around social media referring to people in China as ‘the bat eaters’. Is bat a common menu item? No. Giant salamander? No. Other animals within the whole farmed-wildlife trade? No. You do get some daredevils, you do get some people that get some pleasure from eating very ‘different’ stuff. It exists, for sure. The GMM dudes eat some ‘exotic’ food, ditto with the Best Ever Food Review Show guy, same with Andrew Zimmerman. The equivalents of those personalities also exist here – perhaps a bit moreso, but the difference would be mostly one of degree. But they’re not really the primary driver of the farmed-wildlife trade.
To be frank, the biggest driver of the farmed-wildlife trade was TCM. Now, I have a… very highly developed opinion on the subject of traditional Chinese medicine. [opinion from someone that doesn’t know what they’re talking about] Put simply, I don’t ‘believe’ in it… but I believe it works, mostly because placebos work. And TCM appears to be a collection of all the factors that appear to maximize the placebo effect (e.g. expensive and rare placebos seem to be more effective than cheap ones, placebos are more effective if administered by an expert, placebos are much more effective if invasive like acupuncture… etc). And hey, if someone can actually get better from a placebo, that seems a lot better than drugs or surgery! [/opinion from someone that doesn’t know what they’re talking about] But there’s a cost there, because some – not all, but some – TCM uses some exotic animals in their tonics or whathaveyou. So farming the wild animals seemed to be a decent middle ground between the TCM practitioners that wanted their ingredients and the conservationists that were worried about endangered animals. Farm the animals, everyone gets what they want, until of course some novel zootonic disease arises…
Of course, in China like in many cultures, the line between ‘food’ and ‘medicine’ can get a bit blurry.
So now we get to the markets themselves. While some of what you see online about Chinese wet markets are forgeries, and most are certainly cut to maximize shock value… there definitely were some markets that sold live, farm-raised wild animals for consumption (whether for food or medicine). We’ve traveled, we’ve seen ‘em. They existed. It’d be lying to say otherwise. However, those kinds of markets are, by and large, special wholesale markets (sometimes under the umbrella of seafood markets) that sell to restaurants and such – NOT your normal, run-of-the-mill neighborhood wet market.
The criticism of the normal run-of-the-mill wet markets generally fall under three categories: (1) they’re not refrigerated (2) they feel icky to a Westerner and (3) they carry live animals (mostly chicken and fish), killing and cleaning them on the spot for you. Let’s first agree to ignore complaint #2, yeah? Just because some sheltered little American snowflake like Tucker Carlson thinks a dead frog is weird doesn’t make it weird. Complaint #1 is more reality-based and anyone that living here knows that wet-markets in the late morning can uh… get a certain smell to them. That’s why most people go before 10am. That’s later than most English teachers with a DSLR wake up on weekends, which’s why you’ll see some less-than-informed expats also rag on wet markets.
Complaint number three is the reality-based one. First off, we’ve killed chickens and fish on camera here before. If you eat meat, the process from animal --> meat shouldn’t give you any gross-out factor: if it does, you should honestly consider if vegetarianism might be a better lifestyle choice for you (seriously). But while there doesn’t seem to be any problem with doing this with fish, chickens are a tougher question. The bird flu pandemic (which started in either the US or Mexico, by the way), caused a lot of markets throughout Asia to question whether the practice of keeping live chickens at the market is a good idea. In Singapore, Hong Kong, most major cities in Mainland China (Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Beijing, etc etc)… that practice is now banned. The foodie in me was kinda disappointed when that happened (it’s nice to know you’re getting the freshest chicken)… and I’d personally rather see vendors just get proper protective equipment over a straight ban, but hey. I get it. That said, there’s still some markets in mainland China that keep live chickens, for sure (IIRC they can’t keep the chickens there overnight though, not sure what difference that makes).
Lastly, I feel like now matter your political persuasions… it should be patently obvious that many of these politicians are pointing towards China to deflect blame. If the virus had been a quick moving one, if it swept around the world without much warning at a blink of an eye… then I could certainly understand some of the blame-game there. But here’s the way I look at things. If you sit there for months on end calling this whole thing “nothing more than a bad flu”? If you were shaking your head at the ‘overly authoritarian’ measures China is using to combat the virus? If after the entire city of Wuhan goes on lockdown you sit there for two months with your dick in your hands doing zilch to prepare? You lose your right to pass the buck.
I get he's explaining the broader definition of wet markets to westerners, but the issue with China's viral problems (SARS and COVID-19) are specifically wet markets (fine, just markets) that...
I get he's explaining the broader definition of wet markets to westerners, but the issue with China's viral problems (SARS and COVID-19) are specifically wet markets (fine, just markets) that trade in exotic animals. I can applaud him trying to force this sort of nuance into the conversation because it always helps, but the points he makes are also blind to the issue at hand.
To clarify, I only figured there was a small minority of markets trading in exotic animals anyway, but I also find his explanation of "wet markets" to be genuinely interesting.
The pinned comment to this video is where a lot of the meat is. It's worth a read all on its own, but in it he argues that the farmed-wildlife trade, not wet markets, are really the questionable practice we should be discussing. While yes, the wildlife was often then sold at wet markets, the vast majority of wet markets did not participate.
Additionally, he talks about how traditional Chinese medicine plays a large part of the demand for farmed-wildlife, and does a good job giving a nuanced take on that. Finally, he talks about changes and criticisms he thinks are in fact reasonable, which he didn't really get to in the video.
TL;DR: Read the pinned comment on the video. It's very good (if wordy).
(Agreed - I'll copy paste it here to make it a bit easier)
I get he's explaining the broader definition of wet markets to westerners, but the issue with China's viral problems (SARS and COVID-19) are specifically wet markets (fine, just markets) that trade in exotic animals. I can applaud him trying to force this sort of nuance into the conversation because it always helps, but the points he makes are also blind to the issue at hand.
To clarify, I only figured there was a small minority of markets trading in exotic animals anyway, but I also find his explanation of "wet markets" to be genuinely interesting.
Short video by a Chinese Cooking youtube channel explaining the meaning of "wet market".