Here’s a dead dog for sale at the market in Yibin. According to traditional Chinese medicine, dog meat will keep you warm in the winter. Since I’ve been here, people (and news articles) have tried to convince me that dogs are only eaten by a small percentage of people in the southern areas in China like Guangdong, Yunnan, and Guangxi – provinces with eccentric food traditions and large ethnic minority populations. However, it seems pretty apparent that the consumption of dog meat is a relatively normal thing in Sichuan as well. It seems like eating dog meat is much more popular with the older generations and many of my students see dogs as pets and friends. I’m pretty sure that these dogs didn’t come from a large dog meat farm, rather they were stray dogs.

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