Many westerners don’t understand why Chinese people eat dogs. After some of them have studied Chinese, they realized that the word “dog” is used in many derogatory expressions. Some of those are “a running dog”, “stinky dog droppings” or “like a dog who bites on the strength of its master’s power”. This last one describes a person who takes advantage of someone else’s strength to bully others. Why do dogs have such a bad reputation in China? For hundreds of years in rural China, dogs have been used to guard houses. The more they bark at the sight of strangers, the more generous their owners are in rewarding them. That in turn makes the dogs even more aggressive. In the old days, a scholar visiting a village would knock on the door of a farmer’s house, hoping to be greeted with hospitality. Often, to his dismay, he would be greeted by a barking dog that would sometimes bite them. The scholar would be scared and run back home and, out of anger and frustration, coin phrases to curse dogs. However, in recent years, people have begun to like dogs, the role of the dog has changed from a sentinel to a favorite pet.