0293 Shark Fin Soup

Here in China, shark fin soup is a delicacy that was first served, it is said, by an emperor of the Song Dynasty over a thousand years ago. It was long seen as a sign of prosperity and respect and was one of the Big 4 foods of the traditional wedding banquet. A wedding without shark fin soup was a sure way for a family to lose face. Being associated with the reviled elite, the dish naturally fell out of favor during the Maoist years but it experienced a return of popularity with the rise of the new middle class. Lately, however, it is falling out of favor again but for environmental reasons rather than proletarian ones. The harvesting of the fins is horrific: they are sliced off and the rest of the shark is dumped back into the water. To add insult to injury, the fin itself has no nutritional value or flavor: its is purely symbolic. Bucking 1000 years of tradition, nowadays killing sharks is more about losing face than saving it. #China #Hacker #CEAS