It is what it is

Many Chinese restaurants have large glass jars of flavored baijiu (a very strong hard rice liquor) sitting on a counter somewhere up by the cash register. They are usually flavored with fruit or Chinese herbs marinating in the bottom of the jar, in much the same way that some brandies or fancy vinegars are flavored in Western countries. I was a bit surprised last summer, when a Chinese friend of ours translated this label as...



...many penis liquor. (Ingredients: grain alcohol, bull penises, ram penises, dog penises.) And yep, sure enough, floating on the bottom of that particular jar was a layer of shrively brown mushroom-looking things that, upon further examination, appeared to be the real deal, so to say. (And no, I haven't sampled any, thankyouverymuch...)

Aside from my personal aversion to penis-infused alcoholic products, I've been a bit reluctant to post this picture for other reasons as well - chief among them being the "Hey, wow, look at the funny things these foreign people eat" phenomenon. After all, Western culture is filled with all sorts of delicacies (bleu cheese, raw eggs, escargot, to name a few) that other cultures find disgusting. And I'm sure that there are plenty of animals' privates floating around in the American foodstream as well, though not as immediately recognizable as such.

But still, a lingering question. When can we try to understand a practice that may be strange to us, and when is it Just Plain Wrong? Relativism versus absolutism, to put it into academic terms.



So are dog penises okay to eat? Farm-raised Chinese alligators? (wild population, ca. 300) Scorpions? Tube worms? Seahorses? (My answers: No; Ummm, no; None for me, thanks; Go ahead, if it floats your boat, but I'll take a pass on that one; and Most Certainly Not.)

I know the whole "culturally relative" vs. "moral absolute" debate is nothing new, but it takes on a whole new tone when you are invited to an expensive seafood restaurant and see a couple of moray eels swimming in the tank next to the lobsters...