Why Do Chinese People Eat So Much Pork?
Why Do Chinese People Eat So Much Pork?
There is a running joke in China: when pork prices go up, the entire country feels it. This is not an exaggeration. When pork prices rose sharply in 2019, Chinese state media covered it like a national economic crisis. The government released pork from strategic reserves to stabilize prices.
This is the kind of thing that only happens when pork is not just food but national infrastructure.
So why does pork hold this position in Chinese cuisine? The answer involves 2,000 years of food history, some clever pigs, and one poet who changed everything.
## The Meat Nobody Wanted
Here is something most foreigners do not know: pork was not always the king of Chinese meat.
In ancient China, before the Han Dynasty, beef was the premium protein. The “six livestock” — horse, cow, sheep, pig, dog, chicken — had a clear hierarchy. According to the Book of Rites, cattle, sheep, and pigs were the “big sacrifices,” reserved for kings and high officials. Common people? They ate meat only during festivals and celebrations.
Then came a problem: the iron plow.
Once Chinese farmers started using iron plows around the Spring and Autumn period, cattle became too valuable as labor animals to slaughter for meat. Dynasty after dynasty issued laws forbidding the killing of working oxen. Beef faded from the dinner table.
Here is where it gets interesting: beef was replaced by lamb, not pork. For over a thousand years, from the Northern and Southern Dynasties through the Tang Dynasty, lamb was the meat of the Chinese elite. The Luoyang Temple Record calls sheep “the best product of the land.” In the Tang Dynasty’s Taiping Guangji, meat is mentioned 105 times — lamb appears 47 times, pork only 12.
The Song Dynasty imperial kitchen consumed 434,000 jin of lamb per year. Pork? Just 4,100 jin. Lamb dominated. Pork was considered a low-class food, something poor people ate.
Which is why the story of one poet matters so much.
## The Man Who Made Pork Cool
Enter Su Shi, the Song Dynasty poet, writer, and legendary food lover.
Su Shi was exiled to Huizhou in the 11th century. While others saw this as a punishment, Su Shi saw it as an opportunity to experiment with cuisine. The result was his famous “Ode to Pork” (猪肉颂), in which he praised the dish he developed — slow-braised pork belly that would later bear his name.
But here is what makes the poem interesting: Su Shi openly acknowledged that pork was despised. He wrote that “the wealthy refuse to eat it” and “its price is as low as dirt.” He knew pork was considered a peasant food.
And yet he loved it anyway. This was radical. When a celebrated literati poet endorses peasant food, that food rises in social status. Dongpo Pork did not just become a famous dish — it legitimized pork in the eyes of Chinese culture.
The rich still preferred lamb. But the common people now had a poet on their side.
## The Ming Dynasty Reversal
By the time we reach the Ming Dynasty, something remarkable happened: pork started winning.
The shift was gradual. A Ming Dynasty imperial menu from the Yongle period shows 5 jin of lamb and 6 jin of pork — pork slightly ahead. By the late Ming period, the Imperial Kitchen’s annual records show 18,900 pigs versus 10,750 sheep. Li Shizhen, the famous pharmacologist,干脆写道：”猪，天下畜之” — “The pig is the most important livestock in the world.”
By the Qing Dynasty, the victory was complete. During the 1784 New Year’s Eve feast for Emperor Qianlong, the imperial table featured 65 jin of pork (plus 25 jin of wild pork) against only 20 jin of lamb.
By 1952, China had 89.76 million pigs versus 61.77 million sheep. Today, pork production is ten times that of lamb.
## The Numbers Tell The Story
How dominant is pork in China? Let me put it in perspective:
– 1980: Pork made up **87.6%** of all meat consumed in China
– 2008: Even after economic growth and diversification, pork still held **65.4%** of the market
– Compare this to the same period: United States at 24.2%, Australia at 19%, world average at just 37.5%
Put another way: Chinese people eat more pork than the rest of the world combined. This is not a preference. It is a structural feature of Chinese food culture.
## Why Pig Beat Sheep
Here is the question worth asking: lamb had the prestige, the history, the cultural momentum. Why did pork win?
The answer comes down to three factors: space, fertilizer, and efficiency.
**Space:** China is crowded. The population exploded during the Ming and Qing dynasties — from 100 million to 430 million people by the mid-19th century. There simply was not enough grassland for sheep. Cattle need pasture. Pigs do not. A peasant family could keep two pigs in a small pen behind their house. You cannot do that with sheep.
**Fertilizer:** This is the part that surprises foreigners. In traditional Chinese agriculture, pig manure was extremely valuable as fertilizer. One pig could produce enough fertilizer for 7.5 mu of farmland. The saying went: “No pig in the fields, no scholar in books — neither will succeed.” Pigs were not just meat. They were part of the farming system.
**Efficiency:** Pigs convert feed to meat at a rate of about 35%. Sheep? Around 13%. Cattle? Just 6.5%. When grain is precious and land is scarce, efficiency matters. Pigs win.
The pig also reproduces faster. One sow can produce 14 piglets per litter. A sheep produces one or two lambs per year. For a society trying to maximize food production, the math favored pigs.
There is also a practical point about what pigs eat. Historical records show pigs were fed on 42 different types of food — kitchen scraps, agricultural waste, even human waste. They ate things other animals would not touch. This made them cheap to raise and easy to integrate into small-farm economies.
## The 1519 Pig Ban
History has a sense of humor. In 1519, the Ming Dynasty Emperor Zhengde issued an edict banning pig slaughter.
Why? Because “zhu” (猪, pig) sounded like “zhu” (朱), the emperor’s surname. And the emperor’s zodiac sign was the pig. Killing pigs was considered an insult to the throne. Violators faced exile, and if they died in exile, their families could not return home.
The ban lasted three months.
According to local records, “Chen Shi buried pigs underground and raised them in holes.” Farmers simply refused to comply. Officials pointed out that state rituals required pig, sheep, and cattle for sacrifices. Without pork, the imperial ceremonies could not proceed.
The emperor backed down. By March of the following year, the palace was using pork again.
Even imperial authority could not stop the pig’s rise.
## What This Means
The story of pork in China is really the story of Chinese agricultural civilization. It is about a society that figured out how to feed massive populations not through vast grazing lands but through clever integration of animals into small-scale farming.
Pigs won because they fit the Chinese farming model perfectly. They ate waste, produced fertilizer, required minimal space, and converted feed to meat efficiently. Lamb — despite its cultural prestige — required resources China did not have in sufficient quantity.
This is worth remembering when you eat char siu or pork dumplings. You are not just eating meat. You are eating the result of several thousand years of agricultural problem-solving by a civilization that had to feed a lot of people on limited land.
Also: if you ever wonder why pork prices are discussed in Chinese state media with the gravity normally reserved for oil prices or unemployment statistics, now you know. Pork is an economic indicator, a cultural symbol, and a strategic resource all at once.
The pig is not going anywhere.
