Vegan life in small-town China & small-town Canada (a conversation)
27 March 2017 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
I'm honest yen so anyway I'm sorry to
hear that because you know I thought the last time we talked could you said you just met your first vegan in real life I kind of got the optimistic impression you were living somewhere where there was going to be a circle of other vegans around you I you know to some extent whether it was the other the other activists at your university or that you were you were not going to be quite so all alone but you have actually ended up as another another isolated vegan is that it yet I go to the smaller campus at Laurier Brantford one so it's like 3,000 people go here's come here to like 10,000 20,000 up the water losses yeah no human right so there should be more people hunter vegan we're to me okay I'll tell you something as the contrast so I agree but like with human rights that was the same when I was in Toronto I made the long trip from University of Toronto campus to your campus that really is like a separate city it's so far apart it's ridiculous that really like two separate cities York York is way the hell at oh my god anyway um del U of T is right downtown but anyway you know I would use to go there just try to meet people in their ecology department and there was like you say like well you're a human rights do you think you're going to meet people these interest i would meet nobody who had any any of those interests in their environmental science and ecology you know program but I mean you know my own experience in Canada obviously is a lot more a lot more negative than positive which is why I put so much time into YouTube and what that has led to to some positive outcomes in my life alright that's always going to ask you right so you know is there even a single vegan restaurant where you live because normally the restaurant owner if there's a vegan restaurant if someone you can talk to yeah there's actually a cold the healthy rabbit um it's like vegetarian and vegan so we have cheese yeah but almost wish I was vegan I'm actually it's like a restaurant I talked to the owner and it's a rest where people travel the world and then they can go work there and they give them free board similar like I could time I go there is someone different devices and this girl from wrong phone supports ago I think well it was pretty cool yeah but i mean that's that's probably your one positive contact to find other vegans will be do or you know other people were seriously interests will be to talk to that owner about about connections in your town that you know whoever the owner or manager is whoever's whoever serious about it there so i understand it even if they're just vegetarian you know and like you can literally put up a poster there i'm sure if you talk to them you know you can do a handwritten poster or whatever saying hey i'm at because maybe there's somebody there you're not you're not meeting you're trying to be trying to meet other vegans here in a dehong there is one vegan restaurant that's owned by an eccentric millionaire it's a restaurant with a hotel attached to it it's really wild it's really crazy and I guess I'm kind of worried about meeting him because of course the language barrier look I need to really go with somebody to translate someone who's completely filling the Chinese because like if I meet him and I blow it like I make a negative impression on him then that's the only vegan in this whole city but obviously he is a powerful and influential vegan he took the time and money to create a vegan hotel which also as a restaurant that of course is nonprofit like it's never going to make money and it's gorgeous by the way like the rooms are beautiful the rooms and like gum the actual set up with the buffet area they have this beautiful room we could have a vegan event or vegan conference they're gorgeous like you know he he made his money actually out of the tea industry so in case you're afraid he's a millionaire because he did something really unethical and so far as I know his money comes from owning a key processing factory so where they take the tea from the farm and then make it into a finished product so that's what I mean you know I'm happy for him if he's managed to make a lot of money without killing anybody absolutely crazy but it's like yeah right I don't need to know I won't ask hahaha but yeah um yeah who knows it could be a lot of dead bodies on that on that tea farm true but you know compared to you any other industry like that's a really it's a really relatively ethical one but you know to me that's so exciting but every time I go there the depressing thing is I think the only ethical vegan in that whole business is the owner and like you talk to the staff and none of the staff give a [ __ ] none of the staff like none of the staff even think veganism is a thing like i try to i'm talking to me in chinese I'm transactional Venus like oh you know like in canada on the vegan activist like I'm trying to argument with the stuff and they look at me and it's like from their perspective this is just a weird restaurant that doesn't have any meat because the owner is crazy like that Sarah feel like that's the perspective on it like oh yeah this place is kind of weird there's no meat it's like you know so they don't see it that way is like a special place or an opportunity or something ethically positive it's you know oh so that's depressing in a different way and I don't know like if I meet other people there who are eating at the restaurant that restaurant is really really busy when it's a magical day on the Buddhist calendar here so like if it's a full moon or there's some other supernatural reason like in the stars for it to be a magical day for Buddhism then tons of people go like local people go to eat at that vegan restaurant they're like vegan for one day because the position of the stars the position the moon is special and like you know maybe they're just vegan for one meal because of that too right look I don't even know you know but it's really weird being in a culture where veganism has some basis in Buddhist tradition in some ways it makes it stronger in some ways it makes it weaker for you right and it's like because if I meet anyone of that restaurant it's not only to walk up to some of the restaurant say oh hi I'm vegan are you vegan too nobody will be none of the staff are none of the customers are so it's kind of weird it's not like a bunch of a growing thing there as it is in Canada but I feel like a lot more people are going vegan even since like last year when I went vegan um I would say right now in China is really the rise of reduce iteri anism like for the first time like the idea like okay give you example so my teacher my main teacher and could man the woman who taught me Chinese the most several people taught me but she was the main one um she said to me that like just ten years ago if you went to a wedding here and this is really true because I remember what China was like 10 years ago if you went to a wedding here the whole point of the wedding was just to eat as much meat as possible to kill as many animals but I just have piles of meat as a sign of wealth and you know what you can see that like literally like they just have a giant dead pig on the table and people don't even eat five percent of it's just a show like piles of me and I went to a banquet here it really weird why wasn't but it was still like that we're like at every table they just had like three enormous whole fish like dead birds that it was just out of a pile of me but I teacher said she went to a wedding but one of her good friends got married and she went to a friend's wedding and she said you know they did the traditional thing where I think they had so ten dishes eight of them are meat and two of them are vegetables and she said like the vegetable dishes people ate all of them and the meat was all lying there not eaten she's like it's a real shift like people are just aware people are starting to regard me as being like cigarettes and alcohol which they did in 10 years ago 10 years ago they regarded meat as being like bread like you just ate is like you know is the staple of the diet and now people are aware like meat is something kind of ugly and immoral and unhealthy and again it's not ethical veganism but there is ethical reducer tarian as a mirror really for the first time where people are start again like people aren't quitting cigarettes or alcohol either but they like in China and a major they do regard alcohol and cigarettes as bad and we're now really shifting into a mentality or overall cultural attitude or meat is also going into that category people don't want to sit down and eat a huge pile of meat anymore just to show that they're not poor just to show that they're wealthy so that's a big big big shift I was nothing but like the boyfriend thing we were together for a year when I decided to go vegan and I'd mentioned it to and was like why I'm doing this but now he's like I understand why doing this like I really appreciate you doing this and I showed him the Earthlings and conspiracy and he's everything to make him and wait today he said um he's eating vegan up until his mom make some dinner along here 22 you could make you something yeah yeah my heart goes out to you I mean the struggle is real I bunnish yen
hear that because you know I thought the last time we talked could you said you just met your first vegan in real life I kind of got the optimistic impression you were living somewhere where there was going to be a circle of other vegans around you I you know to some extent whether it was the other the other activists at your university or that you were you were not going to be quite so all alone but you have actually ended up as another another isolated vegan is that it yet I go to the smaller campus at Laurier Brantford one so it's like 3,000 people go here's come here to like 10,000 20,000 up the water losses yeah no human right so there should be more people hunter vegan we're to me okay I'll tell you something as the contrast so I agree but like with human rights that was the same when I was in Toronto I made the long trip from University of Toronto campus to your campus that really is like a separate city it's so far apart it's ridiculous that really like two separate cities York York is way the hell at oh my god anyway um del U of T is right downtown but anyway you know I would use to go there just try to meet people in their ecology department and there was like you say like well you're a human rights do you think you're going to meet people these interest i would meet nobody who had any any of those interests in their environmental science and ecology you know program but I mean you know my own experience in Canada obviously is a lot more a lot more negative than positive which is why I put so much time into YouTube and what that has led to to some positive outcomes in my life alright that's always going to ask you right so you know is there even a single vegan restaurant where you live because normally the restaurant owner if there's a vegan restaurant if someone you can talk to yeah there's actually a cold the healthy rabbit um it's like vegetarian and vegan so we have cheese yeah but almost wish I was vegan I'm actually it's like a restaurant I talked to the owner and it's a rest where people travel the world and then they can go work there and they give them free board similar like I could time I go there is someone different devices and this girl from wrong phone supports ago I think well it was pretty cool yeah but i mean that's that's probably your one positive contact to find other vegans will be do or you know other people were seriously interests will be to talk to that owner about about connections in your town that you know whoever the owner or manager is whoever's whoever serious about it there so i understand it even if they're just vegetarian you know and like you can literally put up a poster there i'm sure if you talk to them you know you can do a handwritten poster or whatever saying hey i'm at because maybe there's somebody there you're not you're not meeting you're trying to be trying to meet other vegans here in a dehong there is one vegan restaurant that's owned by an eccentric millionaire it's a restaurant with a hotel attached to it it's really wild it's really crazy and I guess I'm kind of worried about meeting him because of course the language barrier look I need to really go with somebody to translate someone who's completely filling the Chinese because like if I meet him and I blow it like I make a negative impression on him then that's the only vegan in this whole city but obviously he is a powerful and influential vegan he took the time and money to create a vegan hotel which also as a restaurant that of course is nonprofit like it's never going to make money and it's gorgeous by the way like the rooms are beautiful the rooms and like gum the actual set up with the buffet area they have this beautiful room we could have a vegan event or vegan conference they're gorgeous like you know he he made his money actually out of the tea industry so in case you're afraid he's a millionaire because he did something really unethical and so far as I know his money comes from owning a key processing factory so where they take the tea from the farm and then make it into a finished product so that's what I mean you know I'm happy for him if he's managed to make a lot of money without killing anybody absolutely crazy but it's like yeah right I don't need to know I won't ask hahaha but yeah um yeah who knows it could be a lot of dead bodies on that on that tea farm true but you know compared to you any other industry like that's a really it's a really relatively ethical one but you know to me that's so exciting but every time I go there the depressing thing is I think the only ethical vegan in that whole business is the owner and like you talk to the staff and none of the staff give a [ __ ] none of the staff like none of the staff even think veganism is a thing like i try to i'm talking to me in chinese I'm transactional Venus like oh you know like in canada on the vegan activist like I'm trying to argument with the stuff and they look at me and it's like from their perspective this is just a weird restaurant that doesn't have any meat because the owner is crazy like that Sarah feel like that's the perspective on it like oh yeah this place is kind of weird there's no meat it's like you know so they don't see it that way is like a special place or an opportunity or something ethically positive it's you know oh so that's depressing in a different way and I don't know like if I meet other people there who are eating at the restaurant that restaurant is really really busy when it's a magical day on the Buddhist calendar here so like if it's a full moon or there's some other supernatural reason like in the stars for it to be a magical day for Buddhism then tons of people go like local people go to eat at that vegan restaurant they're like vegan for one day because the position of the stars the position the moon is special and like you know maybe they're just vegan for one meal because of that too right look I don't even know you know but it's really weird being in a culture where veganism has some basis in Buddhist tradition in some ways it makes it stronger in some ways it makes it weaker for you right and it's like because if I meet anyone of that restaurant it's not only to walk up to some of the restaurant say oh hi I'm vegan are you vegan too nobody will be none of the staff are none of the customers are so it's kind of weird it's not like a bunch of a growing thing there as it is in Canada but I feel like a lot more people are going vegan even since like last year when I went vegan um I would say right now in China is really the rise of reduce iteri anism like for the first time like the idea like okay give you example so my teacher my main teacher and could man the woman who taught me Chinese the most several people taught me but she was the main one um she said to me that like just ten years ago if you went to a wedding here and this is really true because I remember what China was like 10 years ago if you went to a wedding here the whole point of the wedding was just to eat as much meat as possible to kill as many animals but I just have piles of meat as a sign of wealth and you know what you can see that like literally like they just have a giant dead pig on the table and people don't even eat five percent of it's just a show like piles of me and I went to a banquet here it really weird why wasn't but it was still like that we're like at every table they just had like three enormous whole fish like dead birds that it was just out of a pile of me but I teacher said she went to a wedding but one of her good friends got married and she went to a friend's wedding and she said you know they did the traditional thing where I think they had so ten dishes eight of them are meat and two of them are vegetables and she said like the vegetable dishes people ate all of them and the meat was all lying there not eaten she's like it's a real shift like people are just aware people are starting to regard me as being like cigarettes and alcohol which they did in 10 years ago 10 years ago they regarded meat as being like bread like you just ate is like you know is the staple of the diet and now people are aware like meat is something kind of ugly and immoral and unhealthy and again it's not ethical veganism but there is ethical reducer tarian as a mirror really for the first time where people are start again like people aren't quitting cigarettes or alcohol either but they like in China and a major they do regard alcohol and cigarettes as bad and we're now really shifting into a mentality or overall cultural attitude or meat is also going into that category people don't want to sit down and eat a huge pile of meat anymore just to show that they're not poor just to show that they're wealthy so that's a big big big shift I was nothing but like the boyfriend thing we were together for a year when I decided to go vegan and I'd mentioned it to and was like why I'm doing this but now he's like I understand why doing this like I really appreciate you doing this and I showed him the Earthlings and conspiracy and he's everything to make him and wait today he said um he's eating vegan up until his mom make some dinner along here 22 you could make you something yeah yeah my heart goes out to you I mean the struggle is real I bunnish yen