Holy cow! How Hong Kong got its
beef with eating meat
PostMagazine 11 Oct 2014
Today's seemingly arbitrary religious beliefs
involving cattle and beef once served an important practical
purpose, writes Jason Wordie.
Feral brown cattle roaming across the hills of
Lantau and the New Territories are a common sight.
Abandoned when their remote agricultural villages
were depopulated in the 1950s and 60s, the original herds have
multiplied into sizeable wild communities.
Along with domestic cattle, water buffalo can also
be seen in some lowland locations, such as Kam Tin. Ploddingly
picturesque and, for the most part, harmless, both species enable
Hong Kong’s annually less bucolic countryside to retain some rural
atmosphere.
But why were these valuable beasts not rounded up
and sold for their meat when their erstwhile owners, now fully
engaged in running the Chinese takeaways that lured them overseas
in the first place, realised they would never return to
farming?
Quasi-religious reasons for protecting cattle are a
cultural legacy from Buddhism’s migration from India more than
1,500 years ago.
Buddhism developed from earlier Hindu beliefs – much
as Christianity and Islam evolved from Judaism – and many Hindu-
Buddhist traditions spread to China. Most of these introductions,
such as avoidance of beef, eventually became so Sinicised that
their Indian origins today are only apparent on close
inspection.
Buddhist scriptures, or sutras, for example, were
rendered phonetically into Chinese characters many centuries ago;
they mimic without meaning the original Sanskrit or Pali sounds,
and are unintelligible as philosophical concepts. The pointlessness
of these garbled recitations largely accounts for the amused
contempt with which many classically educated Chinese viewed
Buddhist monks and nuns, and the folk superstitions they
propagated.
Respect for cattle was another Buddhist introduction
with Hindu origins; this animal’s presumed sacredness remains one
of India’s defining cultural features. The term “sacred cow”, used
to depict an object of unchallenged veneration, comes from
India.
Now a religious fetish, protection for cattle was
once deeply practical, which appealed to the pragmatic Chinese
mindset.
In early agrarian societies with limited food
security – which encompassed most of the world until, in historical
terms, just the other day – powerful superstitions evolved to
prevent either the destruction of long-term essential items, such
as cattle and other draught animals, or the avoidable introduction
of disease vectors.
Jewish food prohibitions evolved in this way. If a
nomadic, periodically persecuted people wished to remain healthy in
a desert environment, then making the main entry points for
preventable diseases divinely prohibited helped ensure their
survival. Pigs and other scavengers, including shellfish, carried
parasites such as tapeworms, and could spread encephalitis,
hepatitis and other diseases. Eat these foods and catastrophe
surely followed, though the underlying scientific causes were then
unknown.
When priests – powerful authority figures in
primitive Middle Eastern societies – declared “The Lord God” would
smite those who ate certain prohibited foods, this generated fear,
which led to avoidance. Disastrous epidemics and debilitating
chronic disease were dramatically reduced as a result. For most
people, this provided evidence for the blessings that followed when
“the Lord’s will” was obeyed, and the ghastly punishments that
resulted from disobedience.
Superstitions linger in the modern world. Many
traditionalminded Chinese – even urbanites who have been
unconnected to agricultural life for generations – do not eat
beef.
Most who abstain are practising Buddhists, not
devout enough to become vegetarian, but who nevertheless avoid this
meat for lingering cultural reasons.