Chinese Cooking Demystified
5 HN mentions · mentioned in 5 months, 2020–2022
4:26 · 909K views · Apr 5, 2020
Chinese Cooking Demystified shows an ordinary, everyday Chinese wet market to counter sensationalized coverage during the early pandemic, with a pinned comment adding nuance.
Linked to show that typical wet markets are ordinary, grocery-store-like places, not the exotic scenes often portrayed.
5 comments from Hacker News
You got most of these bad takes from Project Evidence, a textbook example of a gish gallop that looks convincing only by the sheer quantity of shit it contains. I don't have time to "school" you in everything, because you wrote so much that was wrong that I don't have time to. That's literally the whole point of a gish gallop: it takes 10x more words to refute bullshit than to state it. While I'm having my morning coffee let me do a few: > the CCP has made a big show of shutting down the wet markets, only to allow them to reopen quietly This is completely wrong, because it mixes up wet markets (which literally mean any market that doesn't only sell dry goods, and which also exist throughout Asia, in Europe, and even in the US, and are far less weird than you've been told: this video ), and the exotic wildlife trade. The latter was shut down, and remains shut down. The former have never been shut down, because it's where people get their groceries. > The Wuhan Institute of Virology was scrubbed of information about one particular young woman who was working as an intern there, and has been named as a possible "patient zero." If you actually read the complete evidence that Project "Evidence" gives for this, it is: 1. There was a graduate student at WIV that graduated 5 years ago (as graduate students do) 2. There was once a rumor on Chinese social media that this person was patient zero, but absolutely no reason given why that would be the case (and obviously, Chinese social media
The so-called 'Wet market' is basically the counterpart of the farmer's market in the west. It's the concept of the 'market' for average person, not only for Chinese but also for east and southeast Asia, banning it equals banning the 'market'. In my experience, I feel like 99% of the market I've been don't sell exotic animals. Here's a really good example of an average wet market [0]. Also exotic animal trading has been seriously crashed down in China early this year. I bet you won't be able to see it happening in the following decades at least. [0] this video
>Have you seen a easy Asian wet market in person before? If you’re comparing it to Whole Foods I’m not sure you have? Have you seen one in the last decade? It's changed dramatically, and ranges from an open-air grocery store to yes something more depressing like what is in that wiki article. this video
The term "wet market" just means a market that sells non-dry goods, like meat or vegetables. Most farmers markets are wet markets. See this video for an example. Perhaps you mean campaigning against eating exotic animals?
I think the issue would be with bush meat, not with markets that carry non dry goods? Wet markets on the whole seem pretty innocuous: this video