Diet, Lifestyle, Ideology: Vegetarians in Modern Beijing

The new century saw the development of a new kind of vegetarianism in Beijing. Unlike the conventional vegetarians who chose the diet out of religious belief, the new generation of vegetarians and vegans in Beijing incorporated multiple new motivations including health, environment and animal welfare which were generally imported from the ‘West’. By combining the ‘western’ vegetarianism with local Buddhism, the ideology was well fitted into local context. Commercial entities such as vegetarian restaurants helped to raise the public’s awareness of vegetarianism yet the lifestyle is still non-mainstream. It may receive mainstream acceptance by further commercialisation of vegetarianism.