A Meal Fit For A `Capitalist Running Dog'

BEIJING - The whole week I was in China, I saw only two dogs.

One was a small white Pekingese that a well-dressed woman was taking for an evening walk outside a nice apartment building near the China World Trade Center.

The other was on my plate at the Yanji Restaurant northwest of the Forbidden City.

Actually, the dog was on two plates, but the waitress assured me it was the same dog. She wasn't sure what kind of dog it was; I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

In one dish, the dog meat was sliced thin and grilled with a few green onion spears. In the other dish, dog morsels were stir-fried in a tasty sauce.

Both were excellent, tasting a little like beef or veal.

Why did I want to eat dog? Several reasons:

1. I was born in the Chinese Year of the Dog, and since boyhood, I have been both fascinated and horrified by the fact that the Chinese commonly eat dogs.

2. The Chinese Communists used to refer to Americans as "capitalist running dogs." Somehow I liked the idea of a running capitalist eating dog in China.

3. Dogs are friendly, lovable and intelligent. Maybe eating dog would bestow some of those same qualities on me.

4. OK, I wanted to see my friends' faces when I told them I had eaten dog. Indeed, most of them were appalled. But they eat lambs, calves, pigs, chickens, rabbits and other animals that were once cute and cuddly, maybe even someone's pets.

What's the difference?

When I first arrived in Beijing, I asked the concierge at my hotel if there were any restaurants nearby that served dog. He didn't know of any, but helpfully wrote in my notebook the phrase "I want to eat dog" in Chinese, so I could show it to waiters. I never mustered the courage to try that.

He also taught me the Chinese word for dog, which is go. But if I walked into restaurants saying go, I feared they'd just direct me to the restroom.

Happily, some Chinese colleagues that I met at my conference generously offered to find a restaurant that served dog. By the next day it was all arranged.

Ms. Jiang Xiaojuan, a senior research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Mr. Zhang Cheng-Yao, a senior researcher in the Academy's Department of Enterprise, took me to the Yanji. Zhang brought along his charming daughter Zhe, 18, who explained to me that her schoolmates used to call her "Yellow Dog" because of the way her hair stuck out in back.

The Yanji is a government-owned, slightly shabby place that serves mostly Korean food. (Koreans eat a lot of dog, too.) On a Tuesday night, it was packed. Most of the tables were communal. We sat at a table upstairs, with a small propane-fired grill in the center.

We started with Beijing Beer and jasmine tea, followed by some appetizers - pickled cabbage and mushrooms, roasted cashew nuts (a real challenge to eat with chopsticks), and some green vegetables that looked like miniature horsetail (the plant, not the animal).

Then came a plate of raw meat - and for a moment, my stomach fluttered. But it was beef, not raw dog.

The beef slices, along with some thin white fish, we placed on the grill and cooked ourselves.

The dog dishes were served next, with no special fanfare. Everything was delicious.

Zhe and I loved the dog. Together, we finished both plates.

I liked Zhe. When our waitress seemed grumpy, Zhe said: "We don't pay for the smile."

Zhe knew about the Tiananmen massacre, the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, and she feared another period of chaos in China.

"No one wants chaos. We would have no family, no schoolmates, nothing to eat, no clothes. We could not study. We would become sad.

"When I grow up I will go to America and Australia and England," she said. "I will receive their ideas. The good ideas will help me and will help my country. Young people like me will change our country, and we think it must be changed."

It was my last night in China. The four of us ate and drank and laughed for several hours.

We talked about our families, our friends, and the futures of our countries. We had a terrific time.

And that was really good dog.