On 31 January I wrote about an unenviable number one spot Hong Kong occupied - being China's "most toilsome city". Actually, we have an even more disgraceful title of being the shark's "number one killer". According to a report by Oceana, an international ocean protection and restoration environmental advocacy group, Hong Kong imported 10,000,000 kg of shark fins in 2008 and was the world's largest single market for the product. That means each Hong Kong person consumed over 1 kg of shark fins per capita, although it is also likely that part of the shark fins were re-exported to China. So it is definitely heartening to see that some Hong Kong young people have awakened to the cruelty and irresponsibility of eating shark fin and are campaigning for newly-weds not to serve shark's fin soup at their wedding banquets and for the guests to express their disapproval if they do.
As I wrote on 23 January, whenever I attend dinner gatherings and banquets and see shark's fin soup being ordered or served, I so dearly wish to tell them about the harm but I lack the moral courage to do so. The fact that the 'no more shark's fin soup in banquets' campaign is on the front page of a leading newspaper in Hong Kong should go some way towards raising people's awareness about the selfishness of bringing suffering to other lives and even driving them to extinction just to satisfy one's own gastronomic cravings.
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