Chapter 5 Eat their own

In my opinion, let's start the serious topic of "eating yourself" with the following light-hearted joke called "The Menu": In the first-class cabin of a luxury airliner, there are three passengers who are either rich or expensive, including an American oil tycoon, a Japanese car tycoon, and a chief of a certain cannibal tribe.Flying and flying, when it was time for dinner, the stewardess first asked the oil tycoon: "Sir, what do you want for lunch?" "hamburger." The stewardess asked the car king again: "Sir, what do you want for lunch?"

"Sushi." Finally, the stewardess asked the cannibal chief: "Sir, what do you want for lunch?" Seeing the chief's distressed face, the stewardess asked with concern: "So, how about hamburgers? Otherwise, sushi is also a good choice?" The chief kept shaking his head, and finally, he ordered the stewardess impatiently: "Please show me the passenger list..." From the gaps in the words of this joke, I can roughly see three basic theories related to cannibalism: first, cannibalism is a barbaric behavior; Third, the meat of first-class passengers is usually not very tasty.

From the perspective of law and ethics, cannibalism is a high taboo, but academically there is a very strict definition of this behavior, according to American anthropologist Marvin Harris in "Delicious - Food The definition given in the book "The Mystery of Culture and Culture", the so-called "cannibalism" is the act of cannibalism "within the supply of other nutrients." "cannibalism" is not considered cannibalism, at least, it cannot be considered "cannibalism" in the anthropological sense. In the 1960s, Li Ao quoted such a story many times in his articles: "A British explorer met a barbarian who had the habit of eating human flesh during his expedition, and when he found out that the barbarian was a British university graduate , he was amazed. He asked the barbarian, "Do you still eat human flesh?" The barbarian's answer was wonderful. He said, "I eat it with a western fork now!" Li Ao later explained that he The reason why he "repeatedly quotes" this little story is that he "likes the profound meaning of it. The so-called 'Western food fork eats human flesh', his thinking model is a type of 'half westernized'." Follow this "thinking model" In fact, it is not difficult for us to find that our so-called civilization and so-called taboos today are all a kind of "semi-civilization" and "a half-baked civilization" that cannot be separated from the unreliable premise of "having other nutritional supplies". Half-taboo." That's all.

Both extreme hunger and extreme fullness can lead to cannibalism.The so-called "extreme hunger", needless to say, refers to famine.In every period of great famine in human history, tragedies of cannibalism have been staged. In Chinese history books, the three words "people cannibalize each other" are usually mentioned in one stroke.In official histories like "The Great Hunger in the Kanto, people eat each other"; "The Great Famine in the Capital, People eat each other" such records. However, if you want to know the detailed deeds of human cannibalism, you still have to rely on unofficial history.There are many related folk oral histories in Ji Xiaolan.In the last years of Chongzhen, severe drought and locust plagues occurred in Henan and Shandong. Even the grass roots and bark were eaten up.Women and children are called "vegetable men" in the market, and the butcher buys them and slaughters them like pigs and sheep.At that time, a man surnamed Zhou came home from a business trip. When he arrived at the place in the afternoon, the butcher said, "The meat has just been sold out, please wait a moment." Soon, he dragged two women over and said, "Customers You've been waiting for a long time, so I'll give you a hoof first." Seeing that he was going to kill someone, Zhou tried to stop him, but only heard screams. One of the women had her right arm cut off, and she was rolling on the ground in pain. One woman was so frightened that her face paled. When the two women saw Zhou, they cried out to him together. One begged to die quickly, and the other begged to live.Zhou couldn't bear it, so he offered money to redeem the two. Seeing that one girl had no chance of surviving, he stabbed her in the heart to make her die quickly, and took the other girl home.Zhou had no son, so he took the woman as his concubine, and she gave birth to a boy. There was a red thread on the boy's right arm, which stretched from the armpit to the shoulder blade.Zhou's family passed on for three generations and became extinct. People said that he was originally destined to have no children, but because of this kind deed, the incense was extended for another three generations.

As for the extreme fullness, "Yi Ya Steaming Baby" is the most typical example.Duke Huan of Qi became the king of a country, and he was served wholeheartedly by the famous chef Yi Ya (later enshrined as the patriarch by the Chinese kitchen industry) in terms of food, but a bird faded out of his mouth.In order to please Duke Huan of Qi, Yi Ya killed his own son and cooked a pot of broth with his son's meat for Duke Huan of Qi to taste it. The details of cannibalism are outrageous, but the consequences are even more unimaginable.It is said that after the Tang Dynasty, Suiyang City (now Shangqiu, Henan) was besieged, and more than 60,000 soldiers and civilians in the city ate each other, and finally there were hundreds of people left.If the difficulty of the siege continues to be puzzled, it is very likely that only one person will be left in the end.At that time, this person may have to eat himself.

Both extreme hunger and extreme fullness can lead to cannibalism. Correspondingly, extreme hatred and extreme love can also lead to one eating the other. Cannibalism out of hatred is not difficult to understand at all. When two people quarrel, one party will show his fierceness, and the other party will say provocatively: "How dare you, can you still eat me?" In addition In history, there is even the famous sentence of Yue Wumu "Aspirations hungry for Hulu meat, laughing and thirsty for Xiongnu's blood" as evidence.In fact, I believe that the "hungry meal" and "thirsty drink" here are not just used by the author to "express ambition". With the ethical concepts and common sense of hygiene in the Southern Song Dynasty, if there is a real opportunity and need, these two It is still possible for the two verbs in the verse to be put into practice.In fact, whether the "Hulu" and "Xiongnu" can be regarded as "human beings" is a problem, not to mention the crimes they committed against the Han people, it is really "not eating is not enough to anger the people".

However, in Chinese history, it was the Han people who were actually eaten because of national hatred and family hatred.After Sun Hao succeeded to the Eastern Wu Dynasty, he often served Cen Hun in Chongxin, slaughtered virtuous officials, and plundered the common people.The subjects of the state of Wu hated Cen Hun, who helped the emperor to abuse him, to the bone. When Du Yu, the general of Jin Dynasty, led the northern army to march south, the near officials all believed that there was no disaster in the East today, and it was Cen Hun's crime.So without waiting for Sun Hao's approval, hundreds of people rushed into the palace, chopped up Cen Hun, and ate his flesh raw.

Although there are not many cases of eating each other out of love, it is an astonishing but true finding drawn by psychiatrists and physiologists through the in-depth analysis of several appalling cannibalism incidents that occurred in the 1980s in recent years. Not without convincing conclusions.The Japanese Issei Sagawa who ate his Dutch girlfriend in Paris in 1981, according to the conclusion of psychoanalysis, was because the cannibal suffered from severe psychological barriers in interpersonal communication and emotional expression. The way the other party eats to express their love. According to Zuo Chuan Yicheng (after being arrested, the police found that he had a serious mental illness, so he was sent to a psychiatric hospital in Paris for four years, and he was not deported to Japan until the French authorities could not pay his fees. At that time, the Japanese law did not stipulate that the deported Japanese must continue to be imprisoned, so Zuochuan Yicheng was freed, and now he has become a star of pornographic movies) I told the BBC in the spring of 2001, His motivation for cannibalism comes from "gender confusion".He said: "I am small and ugly, so I especially envy those tall, strong and healthy people, especially those beautiful girls. In my heart, eating people is the same as being eaten, so I wouldn't mind being eaten by a young and beautiful girl."

When BBC female reporter Ingrid asked him: "Then you mean you want me to eat you?" She replied without hesitation: "Yes."