Is that Dog in my soup?

Today I faced my Chinese food fear head on. Today I decided that I may never eat soup in China again and that I am okay with that. It all started with a lesson on feelings. Sad, happy, embarrassed, shocked, depressed, frightened, ecstatic etc. 

It is very hard to get the kids to speak about anything other than school because that's all these poor kids do, is attend lessons. What makes you sad, getting bad grades. What makes you happy, getting good grades. When were you embarrassed, when I didn’t do well in the test. Who frightens you, my maths teacher. 
Anyway, I asked the student what makes her scared besides school work and she told me her grandmother. Take all the cliché’s and stereotypes you have heard about Chinese people and eating and animals etc and throw them all together and you have this Ouma. Ouma got mother to kill the family dog a few years ago because the meat is not only delicious but keeps you warm in the winter. Apparently in the old days, dog soup was a stable winter food like spag bol or gluwine. 

The family dog, I kid you not. Apparently this woman now walks the streets after dinner and watches all the people taking their family pets for walks and remarks to her family how delicious they all look. So of course I asked, “What about cats,”…No, tiffany said, she will eat them but she doesn’t think they are delicious! 
My student found this conversation highly amusing and I have to admit, when she was telling me how the grandmother comes home after a visit with the family to the zoo just to tell the mother which animal she would like to eat first, I laughed a bit myself, picturing this tiny old Chinese ouma with a carving knife running after a lion. 

I have decided not to meet that grandmother for fear that she might want to taste a bit of foreign meet. That is not a way I want to go…chopped up in dog soup, fed to all the sweet looking marjong playing ladies with grey hair in buns and slippers on. 

P.s – pledged to braai on national braai day so look out for pics. I am not sure if this will get us arrested but for this South African tradition, I am willing to risk it!