Vipz.14
Member
Welcome everybody, I am Lê Hạnh Hiền Minh, 17 years old and studying at Middleton Grange International College - A Christian school in Christchurch, New Zealand - where occured the 6.3 richter earthquake last February. I came to a Western country with a belief that you people are the role model of protecting pets and animals and I believe I can provide you the best knowledge about Vietnam, as well as Asia to you. I believe you are good people as you understand and follow Jesus - the only way to God. I open this topic first of all to tell you the situation I got on the last day of this first term at school, then come out an explanation as well as solution for this.
2 weeks ago, I was asked by a Christian friend: "Where are you from?" I answered him "I'm from Vietnam". Immediately, he asked me: "Do you people eat dog?". I was SHOCKED. I couldn't believe he had just asked me THAT. I asked him back: "Who told you that my people eat dog?". It was weird to me because this boy seemed to be very excited asking about this "tradition of Vietnam". He answered me that a couple of months ago, a group of Middleton Grange's prefects visited a Vietnamese school and was asked if they wanted to have dinner with the students there. The prefects said yes, and the Vietnamese students asked them "Do you know we have a tradition to have dog meat sometimes for dinner? We can have this special menu for our dinner, do you want some?" 80% of the prefects said "Yes", other said "No". I was totally Shocked while listening to this. I couldn't believe in my ears what I had just heard. Vietnamese students had just humiliated themselves and asked others from another country to join them. And yes, "others" joined them indeed. I asked the boy (he was one of the prefects who came to Vietnam at that time) "Why didn't you say 'No'? You also have Two dogs at home. Didn't you feel guilty or something?" He answered "I didn't know. What I thought was just: Dog meat in Vietnam was just a tradition - as you people explained it to us, I couldn't refuse if it was something related to tradition; and most of us just simply thought it was a dish, a kind of food as well as Pork meat. We didn't know." His answer surprised me. It was actually very understandable:
1. To be polite, have to follow some traditions of the country (these prefects came there to adapt some cutural exchanges --> Vietnamese students accidentally made their friends feel difficult to refuse)
2. It's just a kind of food. When they were not provided enough information about the source of food, they would just consider it as a new dish they hadn't ever tried before. And they would wanna try, obviously.
3. A lot of Vietnamese people is lack of knowledge particularly on this, about dog meat. So they also thought dog meat was normal, and they were too proud to introduce dog meat as a Vietnamese traditional dish.
What I mean by "knowledge about dog meat", I'm sure most of Vietpet members know, and We know it well. There is a huge majority of dogs and cats missing per day and hardly ever be found. Most of them were stolen for making illegal money. Or they were sold to someone else, or they were all turned to the hot "Vietnamese regular traditional dishes" then. Just imagine, if you lost your dog, you tried to find him, and he was actually in someone's stomach - how would you feel like? Or just like what I told the Christian boy after all those explanations: "You are having 2 dogs at home. Imagine if they were stolen, one day You came to a dog meat restaurant and had a dish there, you found out what you just ate were your dog. How would you react after? And if you have known how the dogs were killed, you wouldn't have eaten Dog meat". Moreover, if the dogs or the cats were not stolen, somehow they were transported from Thailand, China; or simply they were from some landfills - which means they are not healthy food. It would harm your health, your health would be accidentally infected, or poisoned.
Anyway, thanks to this situation, I understood a lot of things that I hadn't awared of before. There were other very simple reasons I didn't think about before I had come here. I apologized to you people if you got the same situation - some of our people "seduced" you to do the same thing. However, after reading my post, I expect from you your forgiveness, your respect of your own pets, your own country, and other countries else.
Your sincerely,
~!~ Vipz.14
2 weeks ago, I was asked by a Christian friend: "Where are you from?" I answered him "I'm from Vietnam". Immediately, he asked me: "Do you people eat dog?". I was SHOCKED. I couldn't believe he had just asked me THAT. I asked him back: "Who told you that my people eat dog?". It was weird to me because this boy seemed to be very excited asking about this "tradition of Vietnam". He answered me that a couple of months ago, a group of Middleton Grange's prefects visited a Vietnamese school and was asked if they wanted to have dinner with the students there. The prefects said yes, and the Vietnamese students asked them "Do you know we have a tradition to have dog meat sometimes for dinner? We can have this special menu for our dinner, do you want some?" 80% of the prefects said "Yes", other said "No". I was totally Shocked while listening to this. I couldn't believe in my ears what I had just heard. Vietnamese students had just humiliated themselves and asked others from another country to join them. And yes, "others" joined them indeed. I asked the boy (he was one of the prefects who came to Vietnam at that time) "Why didn't you say 'No'? You also have Two dogs at home. Didn't you feel guilty or something?" He answered "I didn't know. What I thought was just: Dog meat in Vietnam was just a tradition - as you people explained it to us, I couldn't refuse if it was something related to tradition; and most of us just simply thought it was a dish, a kind of food as well as Pork meat. We didn't know." His answer surprised me. It was actually very understandable:
1. To be polite, have to follow some traditions of the country (these prefects came there to adapt some cutural exchanges --> Vietnamese students accidentally made their friends feel difficult to refuse)
2. It's just a kind of food. When they were not provided enough information about the source of food, they would just consider it as a new dish they hadn't ever tried before. And they would wanna try, obviously.
3. A lot of Vietnamese people is lack of knowledge particularly on this, about dog meat. So they also thought dog meat was normal, and they were too proud to introduce dog meat as a Vietnamese traditional dish.
What I mean by "knowledge about dog meat", I'm sure most of Vietpet members know, and We know it well. There is a huge majority of dogs and cats missing per day and hardly ever be found. Most of them were stolen for making illegal money. Or they were sold to someone else, or they were all turned to the hot "Vietnamese regular traditional dishes" then. Just imagine, if you lost your dog, you tried to find him, and he was actually in someone's stomach - how would you feel like? Or just like what I told the Christian boy after all those explanations: "You are having 2 dogs at home. Imagine if they were stolen, one day You came to a dog meat restaurant and had a dish there, you found out what you just ate were your dog. How would you react after? And if you have known how the dogs were killed, you wouldn't have eaten Dog meat". Moreover, if the dogs or the cats were not stolen, somehow they were transported from Thailand, China; or simply they were from some landfills - which means they are not healthy food. It would harm your health, your health would be accidentally infected, or poisoned.
Anyway, thanks to this situation, I understood a lot of things that I hadn't awared of before. There were other very simple reasons I didn't think about before I had come here. I apologized to you people if you got the same situation - some of our people "seduced" you to do the same thing. However, after reading my post, I expect from you your forgiveness, your respect of your own pets, your own country, and other countries else.
Your sincerely,
~!~ Vipz.14
