Here’s the last post of this week! What will happen to Wang ShunXi!? zOMG. Also, thanks for visiting our WuxiaWorld thread, and spread the word about urban novels!
Now, we encountered something this chapter that some people may not like very much, so as an attempt to compromise a bit, we decided to use a euphemism for the issue since we have personally seen quite an extreme backlash against it.
What is the issue? Honestly to us, we don’t really view it as that shocking, though we have never tried it ourselves. This chapter will have a section that deals with dogs – namely eatin’ em. If you ever go to Asia, and wanna try/avoid stands/restaurants that might serve it, the euphemisms are typically: 香肉 xiāng ròu (fragrant meat) and wiki also says 地羊 dì yáng (earth sheep, or sheep of the earth) is also used by Chinese-speaking communities. I know that Korea also has a strong dog eatin’ tradition, and wiki has plenty of information on the matter if you’re curious. We ended up going with the second one: fragrant meat. Now we’re not going to bullshit you, it’s dog, but if it bothers you, then you can imagine it’s earth mutton! A magical beast from Magical Beast Mountain Range!
So, do Chinese people eat dogs? Some of them yes, and resoundingly yes for those! They lubbbb dat shit. Clearly the author may also be one of these people. But by and large, the answer is no. I would probably compare it to Americans eating alligators. Some of ’em do it? Sure. Anyways, enjoy the series!
Mecha Mushroom Translations 
i eat hot dog once a while and many country eat it too, why you make a big deal when chinese eat dogs? maybe because they eat the dogs cold?
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hey owl, please dont say that all Indians eat dog meat, more of the 50% of populaton in India follow Vegan diet. Its just as the translator says they will be always exception cases just base on few examples please dont judge the others. Also indians workers do migrate because we have high population but the yearly income on hand is quite low hence they have no option other than migration. Better yet visit some places in India like Bangalore, Bombay etc and you will find that we also have same life styles as the West. Please dont judge the Book by its cover.
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Thanks for reading and commenting! It is indeed difficult to generalize or stereotype a large population, especially from extremely diverse areas such as India or China. Thanks for sharing your insights with us!
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Xian, please point out to where I said “All Indians eat dog meat.”? It’s not good to add words to other people on your own. I related a situation that happened and even if you don’t like it, it still happened. I know that you’re proud of India, but there are also Indians that cannot afford to be proud and even more so, cannot afford to be picky about where their food comes from.
Now this one is opinion, but those that work in construction overseas tend to be from poorer areas. The Indian IT expats tend to be from the richer areas. India does have a huge disparity between the rich and the poor. If you only see the rich areas, is that really a reflection of India as a whole? My sis did missionary work there. One thing that amused her greatly was that whenever traffic stopped at a light, people would shut off their engines to save fuel. Not something you see much in the “Westernized” world. The massive resulting quiet was… amusing. And yes, she is a weird one. That’s my sis.
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I know that Indian construction workers when they temporarily move to a new country to work, do end up eating dog meat, their living environment both overseas and at home is so poor that meat is meat, regardless of if it came from a horse, dog, cat or rat. To them it’s eat or starve. I think it is only as we become “richer” as a society that we become more picky with our food.
True conversation between my father and a construction worker he met:
“There used to be a lot of dogs around here, wonder what happened to them?”
“Oh on Monday we have stew, on Tuesday we grill…etc.”
🙂
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I had an Indian friend from college, and whenever we had get-togethers, he couldn’t always eat the things we were cooking. I’d say they are quite selective about what they eat, though the wiki says that regions differ from place to place in India, I suppose much like China.
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Thanks for reading and commenting! We’ve experienced cultures evolve as they became more wealthy, and generally they did become more picky about the sources of meat, especially if they started keeping pets. Thanks for sharing your insight with us!
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So awesome!
Thank you to the translation team for this chapter!
Thank you to the editing and proof reading team for this chapter as well! 😀
Huge thank you to all of you,
Well done!
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Thanks for reading and commenting!
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thank you so much for the chapter and for your hardwork guys I really appreciate this 😀
really enjoy this chapter guo guo actions always make everyone worrying about her after this four wolf gangs only history
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Thanks for reading and commenting! We’re glad you enjoy the series! Yeah, it doesn’t look so good for the 4 puppies gang.
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Guo Guo went for money. I can feel it. We are connected with a mental bond.
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Also, thanks for this chapter! I look forward to this every day. I’m going to cry now that I have to wait till next week. 😥 and the fragrant meat thing, it’s cool whatever is put in with regards to cultural terms and such. I’m not Chinese and as a non Chinese reading Chinese stories I personally can’t be offended by anything even if it is vulgar in my sight only or was meant to be for everyone. If the story is like that then, so be it, if you change it, that’s ok too. I learned something new with the dog meat term so it’s all good.
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Thanks for reading and commenting! We’re sorry for the delay, but we had to cope with the reality of requiring a break due to fatigue. Also, thanks for sharing your thoughts and insights regarding the dog meat. Please tune in next week, we’ll definitely have another chapter ready by Monday!
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Thanks for the chapter!
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Thanks for the chapter!
But…considering people were fighting and dying in the warehouse…it sounds like they are talking about human meat…
Many Asians eat dog meat, a lot of countries eat beef but many Indians disagree. Devout Jewish people don’t eat pork. What is fine for one culture is taboo in another.
To give preference for one or the other seems disrespectful to the author and his culture.
But I suppose you could change a bunch of other things as well while translating, so long as it makes the text more in line with the beliefs of the reader base. It’s better that way, right? Make sure to remove anything your reader base might disapprove of! Change anything culturally jarring, obviously. It is unfair to change one thing but not all others.
Whatever. I’ve wasted too much time on this comment already. Do as you will. I look forward to your next chapter, though not as much considering how much you are watering down the text for sensibilities(“wet” and now “dog”).
I particularly don’t look forward to what you decide to change next. Meh. Forget it.
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Thanks for spending the time to type it out. We’re new to this and much of our readers are really rather quiet. At least at an art show or something you could read body language or something to gauge what the audience is thinking, but we just have no idea what’s going on.
We put a lot of time, energy and effort into this, and this whole past month we’ve sacrificed virtually every single opportunity to do something else in order to do this. For that reason, the thought of the possibility of some troll, some close-minded intolerant person flaming across our chapter discussions is not something that we want to see happen to our humble little offering.
We don’t wish for that section to become some kind fruitless discussion about cultural sensibilities where everyone leaves unhappy. After all our effort, we sincerely hope that people just read and just enjoy. While we hope that everyone is as open-minded as you are, that’s just down to what the novel is about, our team doesn’t want to get down to moderating like we have seen in other series of other novels, not limited to Chinese xianxia etc genres.
With regards to ‘wet’, I posted a long response about how we probably overly emphasized its severity. In truth it could be described as a nerf, but that’s because we made the mistake initially of trusting our verbal Chinese too much when it comes to slang. Now it probably did put off some readers, but the community is rather small and we do have a very different setting than most novels, so we sincerely doubt it would or will increase our readership much at all. It was more about coming back as a more experienced translator and bringing everything up to the new standards we have set.
We know you are quite unhappy, but we try our best every time with no shortage of sacrifice and effort in presenting you and everyone else with this series. We won’t ask for you to just let it off, and we tried to be upfront about it without igniting a troll blaze; this is our style of presentation hoping for readers to just sit and enjoy the ride, while being honest. Thanks for reading.
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Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts with us, we appreciate your feedback! We didn’t actually alter the original meaning of the author at all. Fragrant meat or “xiang rou” unambiguously means dog meat, just try googling fragrant meat or “xiang rou” to see what we mean!
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