HONG KONG?Donald Duck and friends are being drawn into an unusual showdown (NYTimes registration required) between Western sensitivities and Chinese tradition, setting off a debate that has this city buzzing.
It all began when Hong Kong Disneyland, a new theme park scheduled to open on Sept. 12, announced that it would serve shark’s fin soup – a chewy, sinewy, stringy dish that has been a Chinese favorite for two centuries.
But plans for the culinary delicacy, to be served at wedding banquets, have drawn an outraged response from environmentalists. They say that so many sharks wind up floating in soup these days that there are not enough left swimming in the world’s oceans.
Even though it has yet to serve a single bowl of shark’s fin soup, Disney’s prominent image makes it a natural target. In this simmering shark-eat-shark dispute, one group, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, has printed T-shirts showing Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck brandishing knives and leering sadistically over three bleeding sharks that have lost their fins.
“They say it’s cultural. Does that mean Disneyland in Japan is now going to be having whale burgers?” asked Paul Watson, the founder and president of the conservation society, in Friday Harbor, Wash.
I wonder when the last time was that Mr. Watson protested in Beijing.
