There are like a million popular dishes in China, we are sure you have heard at least once about their spring rolls, their dumplings, their fried rice or their sweet and Sour pork, right? Well, none of those is the official one, because the national dish of China is the Pecking duck.
Pecking Duck: Bad news about the national food of China
Before telling you the bad news, you should know that we tried the Pecking Duck when visited China, and it was delicious, we enjoyed it a lot.
Unfortunately, Years after our trip to China, we started reading about the pecking duck and apparently in the majority of the cases, to make this dish the ducks suffer before dying.
During the process, the duck farms force these animals to eat around 4 times a day. At the same time they are kept in very small cages and after 40-60 days of life, they are killed and ready to be cooked.
Should you stop eating the Chinese national dish?
In our case, long time after informing ourselves about how ducks are treated, we have become vegetarian, but the decision had nothing to do with it. Although we must admit that we stopped eating duck as soon as we knew about it.
Should you do the same? Well, you don´t really need to, what we recommend you doing is before trying this popular dish, ask what´s the way the duck is done. Not everyone applies this animal cruelty to make the duck, so just inform yourself before ordering it.
History of China´s national dish
On another not so sad note, the pekin duck is a meal that has been eaten in China for a really long time. It all started with the Yuan Dynasty, and they even had more than a few versions of the original dish.
At the beginning, this food was known as Shaoyazi, and it was during 1330 when the Ming Dynasty decided to change the name and call it Pekin Duck.
The duck dish started to become more and more famous every day, but it was only the people from the upper class who could afford eating it. Nowadays, it´s officially and not officially considered the Nation food in China.
Enjoy other national dishes of China!
As we said, feel free to eat duck whenever you want, just please make sure these animals are not cooked under animal cruelty.
In case it happens like it did with us and you decide to not eat it anymore, there are many other not official Chinese national foods you must try. Our favorite is the spring roll.
