Why do Chinese eat dogs and cats?

Answer 1

I don't know that they do eat cats but they do I believe eat dogs. They are a good source of protein and as with many Chinese foods there is a belief that there are medicinal benefits to eating dog. I believe they are associated with promoting heat in the body. They are yang food as opposed to yin foods which promote cooling. Good to eat yang foods if you have a cold for example.

Eating what we in the west regard as pets is to us distasteful. However in extremis even westerners will overcome this distaste. I understand that at the end of the second world war people in Holland were so short of protein that some fell to eating cats, so called roof rabbit. In the siege of Paris in the Franco Prussian war many of the animals in the Paris zoo ended up on the dinner plate. This included the elephants.