one shark ata time.docVIP

one shark ata time 　　if you’ve been invited to a formal Chinese banquet or wedding in the past few decades， it’s likely you were served a bowl of soup. Swimming within that bowl of soup may have been translucent strands： chewy in texture， thick like vermicelli and fairly innocuous in taste. If you lifted your spoon and ate a bite， you most likely had a taste of shark fin soup （鱼翅汤 y%ch#t`ng）. 　　You’re not alone， though. Shark fin soup is commonly served at Chinese weddings and banquets as a delicacy and a way of “giving face”（给面子 g0i mi3nzi）， or showing respect to honored guests. In China， nearly everyone who has attended such an event has been served shark fin soup. As Liang Xueni， a student at Shenzhen University and volunteer for the Chinese NGO Zero Shark Fin （中国零鱼翅 Zh4nggu5 L！ng Y%ch#）， says， “My parents would tell me：‘You must eat these good things！’ Only later did I realize what I was eating， and I wondered why people need[ed] to eat this creature.”Incidentally， many Chinese who eat shark fin soup do not even know what it is. The Chinese translation for shark fin is literally “fish wing” （鱼翅）， so it is not immediately clear to diners that the stringy tendrils are actually from harvested sharks. Originally inherited from traditionally conservative Hong Kong society， the now-ubiquitous “celebration soup” has decidedly murky origins. Although shark fin is widely considered one of the “Big Four” （abalone， sea cucumber， shark fin and fish maw）， a set of dishes served at Chinese celebrations to represent prosperity and health， there is disagreement regarding when shark fin soup was first served. Some sources cite a Song Dynasty （960-1279） emperor as the earliest consumer； others reference Ming Dynasty（1368?1644） emperors. In both cases， the story goes that shark fin soup was once coveted for its rarity， an irony given the fact that shark fin consumption has increased alongside the number of shark species close to extinction. As many as one-third of open ocean