Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/91

 CHAPTER IX.

HIPPOPHAGY AMONG THE TARTARS.

The use of animal food among the Chinese dates from the remotest times, and is said to have preceded the knowledge and use of fire. Before the advent of the mythical Emperor Fu Hsi the people ate raw flesh and drank blood warm from their flocks and herds; and when he came he instructed them in the art of cookery, from which fact he derives his other title of The Butcher. From this time downwards the Chinese have been great meat-eaters, consuming, in addition to the various kinds used for food in civilised communities, the flesh of dogs, rats, and asses. These last, however, are only eaten by the poor. The solitary instance, we believe, of a universal food being rejected by a special class of persons is that of beef, which no rigid Confucianist will touch. An ox is euphemistically called the Ta Wu, or Great Beast, which, from its being offered in sacrifice to Heaven by the Emperor, acquires a sacred character; besides which, it renders services to agriculture too noble to permit of its being degraded into an article of food. We may add, however, that no prohibition of the kind is to be found in the Confucian books; it rests upon tradition solely.

It is for much the same reason, perhaps, that horseflesh is hardly ever eaten in China. The only persons