Was beef taboo in premodern China?

This week I was inspired to write about beef after watching Eric Sze’s videos on Instagram about cooking dairy cattle. As it turns out, we have been discussing food taboos in my Eating Right class, which got me thinking about whether there are any Chinese food taboos.

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This post grows out of a question I can’t neatly answer: was beef taboo in China before the late nineteenth century?

Step into any Chinese restaurant today and the menu will be rich in beef. Beef and broccoli.

Beef in oyster sauce, in mapo tofu, chow fun noodles, even in dumplings.

My Chinese mother’s table was also full of beef. Beef for my American father. Beef for her mild version of mapo tofu. We ate so much beef growing up that I was surprised to learn, years later, that the Chinese word rou, “meat,” traditionally referred to pork, the quintessential Chinese flesh.

But beef was not always a popular food in the Middle Kingdom.. It has become something of a cliché to say that cattle were beasts of burden rather than sources of meat or milk. Where available and affordable, cows allowed farmers to plow more effectively and increase yields. The state, at times, even tracked cattle sales and distributed animals to settlers opening new lands. There were solid economic reasons not to turn cattle into dinner.

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Beef tongue and brisket, photo by author