Actually Chinese do eat dogs, cats too, but it's not very common. I've never seen them offered in any resturaunts there but I did see cats and dogs for sale in a big outdoor food market in Guangzhou, Southern China. I also saw scorpions being sold as food too which really freaked me out. Given the choice, I'd take a Lassie burger over a scorpion any day.

This is a pretty good example of the lack of control that the central government in Beijing has over the more remote areas of the country. Where this story came from is Mouding county, Yunnan province. The most remote, backwater, hillbilly area of the Appalachians here in the U.S. would probably look like a cultural and intellectual mecca compared to this place. Simple people with a simple solution to a complicated problem.

Most of the horror stories we hear about China come from regions like this, not places like Beijing, or Shanghai. the western media does a fery good job of making sure we only hear these stories. Think of how bad the U.S. would look if the rest of the world only saw stories about white supremecists, gangs, and George W Bush.