- cross-posted to:
- vegan
- cross-posted to:
- vegan
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“Vegan revolution.” Right.
I see the Guardian is carrying on the proud tradition of western media in forming a narrative and then seeking out support for it.
Revolution may sound like a big word. But there’s an actual fucking crisis with agriculture destroying the planet with the use of chemicals and fossil fuels to produce meat. Yes that’s right, around 3/4 of the world’s fields are cultivated exclusively to feed livestock for meat production. This has consequences:
- pollution and otherwise destruction of the soil and of the water sourecs (because that’s what artificial fertilizers do over decades)
- meat prices are driven down while other goods are just as expensive (if not more expensive)
- people get unhealthy more quick because our bodies were never meant to eat meat everyday (meat was a weekly/monthly luxury when at all even just half a century ago)
Here’s an overview of meat consumption worldwide over half a century:
Do we agree there’s a problem now? Or do you wish to stare at your kebab like everything’s fine? :P
Please don’t put words in my mouth.
My objection is that the Guardian is taking a story “China is turning vegan” and making up bullshit about it. The reduction in meat sales is not some revolutionary change in lifestyle to something new. It’s a reversion to traditional Chinese diet.
The Chinese, long before communism struck, ate WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY higher vegetable:meat ratios than they have in the past fifty years or so, and now they’re going back to it for a variety of reasons, none of which have to do with “going vegan”.
Even the eating of mock meats is something that is literally centuries old in China. The Buddhist temple about 35 minutes’ walk away from me (https://tinyurl.com/v8693cdf) runs an upscale restaurant of purely vegetarian meals that have mock fish, and various mock meats that are enough that I had a (western) vegan friend visiting giving me the hairy eyeball out of suspicion. That restaurant, in one form or another, predates the USA and takes a good-sized bite out of European history as well.
The reduction in meat sales is not some revolutionary change
Of course not. But it’s a “revolutionary” change in a common (depoliticized) understanding of the word, that is a “massive change”. Also, we could argue that this evolution is directly tied to the growing/strong ecological movement in China and is not just a lifestyle change or a return to traditions, but is a symptom of a collective consciousness developed over the past decade or so (for example during the protest movements against polluting industries).
Even the eating of mock meats is something that is literally centuries old in China
I believe it’s even older (isn’t tofu thousands of years old?), but i understand your point. I agree the article with the “vegan” framing is culturally-anchored in a western context which fails to understand the local context (i also don’t know about chinese culture and haven’t been to china so i can’t reflect more on that). However, there are some good points, that meat there as here (France) is considered as a symbol of wealth and often in the past century “meat for the masses” has been understood as a form of social progress. Deconstructing this idea of progress as measurable material growth is also a considerable change in politics.
Please don’t put words in my mouth.
I understood your initial comment to be very dismissive without arguments so that’s why i downvoted and commented assuming bad faith on your part. Sorry for that
I understood your initial comment to be very dismissive without arguments so that’s why i downvoted and commented assuming bad faith on your part. Sorry for that
S’alright. I probably could have communicated more clearly. My particular pet peeve is the reversal of how news should be reported.
Should: Gather facts. Report them in story. Does: Decide on story. Gather facts that support.
Living in China in particular it’s absolutely maddening watching that work in obvious service to the drums of war, so I get a bit pissy.
Living in China in particular it’s absolutely maddening watching that work in obvious service to the drums of war, so I get a bit pissy.
I have the same sentiment when you see all those stories about Huawei doing the very same things western companies are doing but getting blamed for it (not the others), or when i saw the racist discourse mounting up surrounding the coronavirus, blaming barbaric cultural standards were responsible for the epidemic (while all studies concur industrial capitalism is to blame for lesser resiliency against epidemics).
I can assure you i’m not rolling those drums of war. I crossposted this story from /c/Vegan because it was about China and the story, although told from a western perspective, could open eyes to an aspect of chinese society few people in the global north know about. I mean people around here barely know what tofu is beyond a kind of bland cheese.
As an anarchist, i’m an internationalist, i will never favor military aggression against a foreign nation, and i promote the unity of revolutionaries across the globe to topple their masters. I could also have made that more clear.
I have the same sentiment when you see all those stories about Huawei doing the very same things western companies are doing but getting blamed for it (not the others), or when i saw the racist discourse mounting up surrounding the coronavirus, blaming barbaric cultural standards were responsible for the epidemic (while all studies concur industrial capitalism is to blame for lesser resiliency against epidemics).
Now factor in that I live in Wuhan and you’ll understand why that racist discourse in particular has me nursing a desire to go on a rampage with an aluminium baseball bat in certain circles.
I can appreciate that! But let’s try not to assume bad faith on everyone’s part ;)
Also i should probably warn you since you reside in Wuhan, some discussions we have here on lemmy.ml may very well trigger some uncomfortable questioning/detention by the political police. Given the views you have expressed so far, you probably don’t have anything to fear, but you should still be aware of this risk. /c/Anarchism, in particular is the kind of community that can get you jailed/killed in some regions (not just China though). If you’re interested about Chinese anarchism in particular, i heard some great stuff about Ba Jin, although i could only find the Party-approved censored versions of his books. They were still a good read but not remotely as interesting as the original versions from what i read. Take care
