Historically, members of the imperial courts in Chinese dynastic eras requested grand animals for their meals. Famous examples include the Manchu Han Imperial Feast. Today, yewei can be eaten by anyone with access to wild animals, which can also be imported.[citation needed]
It has been reported that the consumption of wildlife appeals only to a minority of people in China.[15][16][17] However, the topic of whether it should be consumed has had some mixed reactions. According to a 2006 survey by WildAid and the China Wildlife Conservation Association [zh], about 70% of 24,000 people surveyed in 16 cities in mainland China had not eaten wild animals in the previous year, up from 51% in a similar 1999 survey.[18] In a 2014 survey of several cities in China, 52.7% of respondents agreed with the statement that wildlife should not be consumed.[19]
According to The Guardian, some locals in Southern China sometimes boast that they will "eat anything with four legs except a table".[10]
The consumption of exotic wildlife, especially in Guangdong, came under heavy criticism after the SARS epidemic. Following the outbreak of COVID-19, the Chinese government formally made the practice illegal,[20] amidst growing calls inside China to permanently ban the wildlife trade.[21][22]
References
^Shah, Sonia (2016). Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond. New York: Sarah Crichton Books, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 15. the Chinese taste for what's called yewei, or "wild," cuisine, in which exotic animals from snakes and turtles to bats are prepared in special dishes.
^Quammen, David (2013). "The circle". Ecohealth. 10 (4): 492–493. doi:10.1007/s10393-014-0905-3. PMC7088317. PMID24488188. the live-animal dealers of southern China began stacking caged bats and caged palm civets at close proximity, along with many other kinds of wild and domestic animals, all available to be served as food in yewei (wild flavor) restaurants of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and other cities ....
^"A sea change in China's attitude towards wildlife exploitation may just save the planet". Daily Maverick. 2020-03-02. an online poll by the Peking University Centre for Nature Society found that 97% of some 100,000 participants were against eating wild animals. Nearly 80% rejected using wildlife products. Knights said the poll was "probably biased to more educated people, but, you know, that's a large proportion of the Chinese population now." By contrast, 14 million people worked in wildlife and trade consumption before the ban, some media have suggested. "A minority is still a minority; the majority have changed," Lin said when Daily Maverick pointed out a minority in China could mean tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people..
