This was the first dish at Fuji Mountain restaurant in Changhua last Sunday. What it contained was the embodiment of the destruction of the commons to satisfy one particular culture's desire to demonstrate high social status and generosity. The consumption of this soup, considered an expensive delicacy, is not accompanied by cries of surprise, joy and communal satisfaction but instead ladled out unceremoniously and slurped down without so much as cursory recognition of the terrible cost this privilege has afforded them, or silent prayer for the great animals that died so that some person could earn face. It is, at best, destruction for the production of nothing more concrete than a psycho-social construct derived from a desire to emulate a re-imagined aristocracy from a pre-industrial age.
I present: Shark Fin Soup:
... and no I didn't partake, and neither did my boss. No-one seemed to care.
Further Reading:
