Sunday, 12 January

Hu Cheng (胡誠) called to invite us to his house to partake of a meal of dog meat especially prepared by Guo Zhen (郭真). It was quite well done and we thoroughly enjoyed it. When we returned home in the afternoon, we learnt to our great horror that we had eaten our own beloved dog! All three of us (Tianjuan and Fanny) felt extremely sick at that and had no difficulty shedding tears for the poor thing. That dog was originally kept by one of our guards, who two years ago, found it too expensive to keep him. He left him in the street. The dog came to us sometime in June last year occasionally for food and we fed him. He was such a lovely one, being a cross-breed of Chinese Chow and German Police-dog and so intelligent that we regarded him as our own, not infrequently shaking hands with him. He slept at our door every night and has been our watchful guard, though in the day time he went about the whole village like a miserable homeless child. Yesterday his former master, bribed a few miserable dollars by that rascal Guo Zhen, murdered him. He died a very painful death, being shot in the head and stabbed near the throat and received endless blows for fully half an hour. If I had known all this, I would have kicked the rascals. I hate them all the more for committing the double crime of tricking me to eat his meat. I told Fanny that I am now more than ever concerned about a birth of reincarnation and quid pro quo karma. We had fed the poor thing for so long and loved him that he must pay his debt to us in such a way. I will not eat any more dog meat.