Explaining Your Vegetarianism in Mandarin

I've been a vegetarian for around thirteen years. Naturally when eating with others, people want to know why I don't eat meat. So I've already had a lot of opportunities to practice explaining my vegetarianism. Usually I said something like '為了動物福利', so something like 'for animal welfare'. But I always felt that this does not fully explain my reasoning.

Therefore I'm writing today's post to explain how you can talk about why you're a vegetarian in Mandarin.

Why I'm a vegetarian

Since my teenage years I've felt that intensive industrial livestock farming is not right. While there are more humane forms of livestock farming, my feeling was that it would be very hard to always trace down the origins of the meat I eat. To circumvent this problem, and since I have never really loved eating meat anyway, I decided to just become a vegetarian.

How to explain this reasoning in Mandarin

As you hopefully see, my thinking has a few more nuances than just 'for animal welfare' and I wanted to be able to explain those more accurately in Mandarin. Gemini came up with two ways that I liked, so I want to present them to you here and go through important vocabulary.

The concrete explanation

To say that you don't support factory farming, you can use

我不認同工廠化養殖 I don't support factory farming

Here 工廠化 is 'factory ...' or 'industrialized' and 養殖 is to breed/cultivate/farm.

What does the 化 do here

If you're wondering about the use of the 化-suffix, its function in this sentence is to take the preceding noun and make it into a verb. Similar to how applying the suffix '-ize' in English would work.

工廠 factory

becomes

工廠化 factory + -ize = 'factory-ized' = industrialized

See this Chinese grammar wiki article for more info.

Continuing the explanation

To continue the logical chain, you can say

雖然有比較人道的養殖方式 even though there are more humane forms of livestock farming

但在外面真的很難確認肉的來源 but when eating out, it's very hard to verify the source of meat

and finish with the conclusion

所以乾脆就不吃了 so I've simply stopped eating meat altogether

The 乾脆 in this part of the sentence is really useful. You can use it to express 'just doing something' in a difficult situation. The vibe is that of not thinking too much and choosing a simple solution. I think this is very fitting for the way I feel about my decision. ¹

How to express that you're not judging the eating habits of others

For me it is important to make clear that being a vegetarian is my personal decision and this lifestyle choice does not mean I'm judging others on what they eat. ² In Mandarin, you can say something along the lines of

我吃素並不代表我會看不起吃肉的人 Being a vegetarian does not mean that I look down on people who eat meat.

where 看不起 means to look down upon others.

To further emphasize that you're just making a personal choice, you could say

這單純是我個人的選擇 This is purely my personal choice.

Could you also use 簡直?

When formulating 這單純是我個人的選擇, I asked myself whether 單純 could also be replaced by 簡直. Specifically, I wondered whether saying

這簡直是我個人的選擇

would also be valid?

There is an important distinction though:

單純 means that something is simple and does not have any hidden complexity.

簡直 on the other hand, is used for extreme emphasis or hyperbole. It is often used when someone is shocked or surprised. For example:

我簡直不敢相信 I simply can't believe it.

So saying 這簡直是我個人的選擇 would sound like

That is absolutely my own decision!

It would sound confrontational and defensive, which is not what I was going for. So 單純 would be the right choice here. A possible alternative would be 只是. Saying

這只是我個人的選擇 This is just my personal choice.

would also get the point across without infringing on anyone's personal space.

That's it

That was today's article about how to explain your vegetarianism in Mandarin. I hope it helped you and that you found it interesting. See you soon!

Written by me. Proofread by an LLM.

Photo by catrina farrell on Unsplash