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Cannibalism in Asia

Acts of cannibalism in Asia have been reported from various parts of the continent, ranging from ancient times to the 21st century. Human cannibalism is particularly well documented for China and for islands that today belong to Indonesia.

Fanciful depiction of cannibalism in China, from a 15th-century edition of Marco Polo's Travels

Quotes

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Middle Ages

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China

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  • In time, the Chinese developed a taste for human meat.... T'ao Tsung-yi, a writer during the Yüan dynasty [1271–1368], remarked on the taste of human meat (hsiang jou) in his Cho Keng Lu (Records of Stopping Cultivation), in which he said that children's meat was the best food of all in taste, and next to this were women and men. Chuang Ch'ao, a Sung [960–1279] writer, was more specific about the taste of human meat in his Chi Lieh Pien (Chicken Rib Section) in which he referred to children's meat as well-boiled bone (...), which means that because of their superior tastiness children could be eaten whole, including their bones, when they were well-boiled. He also characterized women's meat as more delicious than mutton (...). Men's meat was less so, and was referred to as "jao pa huo" — the least tasty of all human meat. Generally, he referred to men and women as two-legged sheep (liang-chao yang), but he believed that both young children and beautiful women were particularly good for mutton soup (...).
    • Key Ray Chong, Cannibalism in China (Wakefield, NH: Longwood, 1990), p. 137 (the ellipses in parentheses mark omitted Chinese terms)
  • You should know that they eat all manner of foul things and any kind of meat, including human flesh, which they devour with great relish. They will not touch someone who has died of natural causes, but if he has been stabbed to death or otherwise killed they eat him all up and consider it a great delicacy.
    • Marco Polo (c. 1254–1324) about the inhabitants of Fuzhou and its surroundings, in south-eastern China. Translated by Nigel Cliff, The Travels of Marco Polo (London: Penguin, 2015), p. 216.
Literature
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  • One day they [Liu Pei and Yüan-tê] sought shelter at a house whence a youth came out and made a low obeisance. They asked his name and he gave it as Liu An, of a well known family of hunters. Hearing who the visitor was the hunter wished to lay before him a dish of game, but though he sought for a long time nothing could be found for the table. So he came home, killed his wife and prepared a portion for his guest. While eating Liu Pei asked what flesh it was and the hunter told him "wolf." Yüan-tê knew no better and ate his fill. Next day at daylight, just as he was leaving, he went to the stables in the rear to get his horse and passing through the kitchen he saw the dead body of a woman lying on the table. The flesh of one arm had been cut away. Quite startled he asked what this meant, and then he knew what he had eaten the night before. He was deeply affected at this proof of his host's regard and the tears rained down as he mounted his steed at the gate.

Sumatra and Borneo

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West Asia

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Literature
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  • And when morning came with its sheen and shone, we arose and walked about the island to the right and left, till we came in sight of an inhabited house afar off. So we made towards it, and ceased not walking till we reached the door thereof when lo! a number of naked men issued from it and without saluting us or a word said, laid hold of us masterfully and carried us to their king, who signed us to sit. So we sat down and they set food before us such 36as we knew not and whose like we had never seen in all our lives. My companions ate of it, for stress of hunger, but my stomach revolted from it and I would not eat; and my refraining from it was, by Allah's favour, the cause of my being alive till now: for no sooner had my comrades tasted of it than their reason fled and their condition changed and they began to devour it like madmen possessed of an evil spirit. Then the savages gave them to drink of cocoa-nut oil and anointed them therewith; and straightway after drinking thereof, their eyes turned into their heads and they fell to eating greedily, against their wont. When I saw this, I was confounded and concerned for them, nor was I less anxious about myself, for fear of the naked folk. So I watched them narrowly, and it was not long before I discovered them to be a tribe of Magian cannibals whose King was a Ghul. All who came to their country or whoso they caught in their valleys or on their roads they brought to this King and fed them upon that food and anointed them with that oil, whereupon their stomachs dilated that they might eat largely, whilst their reason fled and they lost the power of thought and became idiots. Then they stuffed them with cocoa-nut oil and the aforesaid food, till they became fat and gross, when they slaughtered them by cutting their throats and roasted them for the King's eating; but, as for the savages themselves, they ate human flesh raw.

16th and 17th centuries

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China

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  • 1611. People are selling their daughters and sons, and eating their wives and children. When driven towards dangers, what choices do they have?
  • 1622. When all the chaffs, kernels, grass, wood and wasted leather were eaten up, they ate the flesh of the dead. Later on, people were eaten alive. In the end, relatives ate each other. The troops of Yanfang and Yunqing openly butchered and sold people in a market where one jin of flesh could be exchanged for one liang of silver.

19th century

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China

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  • The Shanxi poet Wang Xilun ... describ[ed] in an essay how children whose starving parents had abandoned them in ditches were slaughtered and eaten by other famine victims as though they were sheep or pigs.
    • About the Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879, cited in Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley, Tears from Iron: Cultural Responses to Famine in Nineteenth-Century China (University of California Press, 2008), p. 77
  • Killing people is as easy as killing pigs. Children cry out for help but no one answers them. They are killed with a knife since meat has become more valuable than human life.
    • Another contemporary author describing the situation during the famine, cited in Edgerton-Tarpley (2008), p. 219

Sumatra and Borneo

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  • In our country it would not be necessary to wash that child; he might be roasted at once.
    • A Batak man in Sumatra, upon seeing a young boy being washed (c. 1830). Cited in Yule (1866), p. 86.

20th century

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China

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  • Qiaoxian town officials treated me to lunch. On that day, the main course was sautéed pig's liver. I tried very hard not to vomit as I swallowed two pieces. I then quickly turned away from the table.... During the previous few days, I had encountered nothing but stories about the cutting out of human livers, boiling human livers, consuming human livers, and barbecuing human livers. My tolerance had reached its limit.

Sumatra and Borneo

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  • When people do not respect our [traditions], they become enemies, and we don't consider our enemies to be human any more. They become animals in our eyes. And the Dayaks eat animals.

See also

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