Westerners often seem to be surprised to hear that there are millions of vegetarians, indeed vegans, in China, but this is nothing new. Way back in the 1880s the British and French Vegetarian Societies printed reports from Christian missionaries who were not themselves vegetarian. However found they had to stop eating meat while they were in China, because the Buddhists they met regarded the Christians as barbaric for eating animals. They also reported on the habit of eating soy beans, unknown in the west at that time, and how they made bean-curd which the French report called 'too-foo'.

Not all Buddhists are vegetarian, and both Buddhism and vegetarianism were suppressed in the more extreme communist era. Today China has become much more open and tolerant (though not completely so of course), with the result that we are now able to meet with vegetarians there.

IVU has had contacts for many years with ethnic Chinese vegetarians in Hong Kong and Singapore, due to the British connections. But somehow we missed the significance of Taiwan until fairly recently - and that country has the second highest concentration of vegetarians in any country, after India, with more than 1,000 veg restaurants. That lapse was corrected in 2007 when the Asian Vegetarian Union held its regional Congress (3rd AVC) near Kaohsiung, in the south of Taiwan. The event was attended by 7,500 vegetarians, many from across Asia, but most from Taiwan - some of them are in the photo below.

Vegetarians in mainland China have always been more difficult to contact, but there too we have made major progress in recent years. Our main contact for many years has been our Chinese IVU webmaster, Genggeng Ye in Beijing. He has been working on the site for about 12 years whilst Societies have come and gone. We had a group of 20 from China at the 2006 IVU World Veg Congress, then lost contact again, but it is now much more stable and the 2007 veg congress in Taiwan helped with that.

Shortly after the Taiwan Congress the President of the Asian Vegetarian Union, Jashu Shah from India, passed away, and the resulting re-shuffle saw the election of Prof. Duo Li from Hangzhou, China, as Deputy-President. Prof Li attended the next Asian Congress, in Indonesia, 2009, and he is on the left in the photo below, with one of his colleagues from Zhejiang University.

Prof Li is now organizing the next Asian Veg Congress in his home city of Hangzhou, to be held next year, 2011.

After the Congress in Indonesia, November 2009, three of us made the first ever official visit by IVU to mainland China. We were invited to speak at the International Vegetarian Forum in Xiamen (on the coast opposite Taiwan). This was part of a huge vegetarian trade fair, and Buddhist Craft Fair, which was partly promoted by Taiwan businesses following greater business opportunities which have recently been made possible. The photos below are from that event:

Since the Xiamen forum we have been in contact with more Vegetarian trade fairs, and possible forums, in Beijing, Guangzhou and Taipei. Wherever possible IVU will be represented at these in order to continue to promote East-West dialogue and mutual support.

More at: http://www.ivu.org/asia-pacific

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