英文の翻訳お願いします。
It was in the late 1970s, after the end of the Vietnam War that the Boat People made news. These were Vietnamese refugees who fled by boat to Thailand, the Philippines, Japan, and Indonesia, and from there tried to get to America, Australia, and Canada. One day, there was a shocking news story out of Melbourne: two Vietnamese Baot People had been arrested and tried in court on charges of killing and eating local dogs.
Most East Asian cultures eat dogs, but this custom has been especially common in China. In ancient times, both emperors and commoners ate dog meat, and sacrificed dogs in religious services. Later on, dogs became associated with loyalty, and people stopped eating them. Even so, dog meat is still widely eaten in South China.
Eating dog meat is common in both Koreas. In recent times, the culture of eating dog meat was restored under the contemporary slogan. "Return to Traditional Chinese Ways." Methods of preparing dog meat in both Koreas are given in detail in classical cookbooks, and include simmering, steaming, and grilling. Nowadays, dog meat is bought in stores and cooked at home. You can buy it in drugstores and in markets in Seoul. It's a little more pricey than beef, but the quality of the dog meat is very good. If you simmer it like sukiyaki, bubbles rise out of the meat, and the smell is divine.
What about Vietnam, the home of the Boat People? There are a lot of specialty shops selling dog meat, and they fill up with customers around dinner time. There are spit-roasted dogs minus their heads and paws hanging in shop windows, and they look delicious. It's just like the South China restaurants, where mouth-watering ducks and chickens are hung in shop windows to attract customers. The Korean shops sell only cooked meat. The meat is eaten together with raw vegetables, and washed down with a local liquor like shochu. This is considered a healthy meal. The meat from these shops is cheaper than beef, and is eaten by the average family.
There are also cat-eating cultures. I heard that there were several cat restaurants in Hanoi, Vietnam, so I went to investigate. They do exist, but barely; the government has banned them. The government said it issued this ban on eating cats because the decrease in the cat population has led to an increase in the rat population. This situation is a threat to community health. It was literally a case of, "When the cat's away, the mice will play." Anyway, that's how popular cat meat is. The government's policy is to enforce the ban until the cat population returns to its original size and can control the rat population.
The reason for eating cats in China is explained with typical Chinese logic. Dragons and tigers are venerated as symbols of strength. Thus, if you can eat one, no power on Earth will be capable of resisting you. The trouble is, drgons are imaginary animals, and cannot be eaten. Tigers were once abundant, but can hardly be found now. So in place of dragons, the Chinese eat snakes, and in place of tigers, they eat cats. This is especially true of the culinary culture in South China.
To return to the news from Melbourne: Australia, a Western society, was flabbergasted by the news that the men had eaten dogs. After all, this is a nation descended from the passionate dog and cat lovers of Britain! At the same time, other Boat People were also astonished. In Vietnam, dogs kept as pets are considered tasteless, and no one would eat them. The dogs the arrested men ate must have been strays. Looked at in that way, you can understand that they felt themselves innocent of any crime.
No one knows what became of the two arrested men afterward. Anyway, it's important to understand that the problem lies in differences of cultures and values. It's the difference between two cultures: one that eats dogs and one that doesn't. But no one can say one side is definitely right and the other is wrong. The problem is not so easy.
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