We agree that it is down to travel/migration - hard to dispute it really, things may change radically if we survive this.
However can I just say that some of your other 'assumptions' are wrong. I have visited China - and actually been to Wuhan, but it was around 1995ish. We went on a 3 week tour of China, there were only cars in Shanghai, no where else. Shanghai was the 'IN' place, the only place we saw 20th century Shops just starting to open up. You are correct in saying hygeine was a second thought to the Chinese - and strangely everyone on the tour went down with 'Beijing Flu' - which was a mild cold which came and went very quickly. It was an escorted tour - the only way you could enter China in those days.
We travelled on the Grand Canal, the Yangtse river and by coach. Usually into and out of museums and cities arriving back at an hotel very late and departing very early. It restricted what you could see and designed to make it near impossible to leave the tour and go elsewhere. But we wanted to see the people and the everyday life on the streets.
We were off to a museum to see a 900 year old man who'd fell into a tar pit - my husband decided it was not for him, so he asked how long we'd be here. 'A couple of hours' the guide said - so off we went (much to the annoyance of the Chinese guide who went into panic mode) up the street. Never seen anything like it, the whole street stopped, they'd never seen a westerner and everyone just stared at us - they came to their windows to look. It was an eyeopener!! There was a family squatting with a huge fish scraping away the scales,next to them a pile of rubbish. At the end of the street was a small market, a fish stall with all the fish laid out on the floor. Next to this stall was the rat catcher with his rat poisons. Obviously in order to show they worked he had a dead rat - either end of his stall, next to the fish stall !
We stayed in Hotels which were all 4-5 Star hotels - that was where several young lads on the tour got their food posioning! Had to rejoin the tour 3 days later as they were so ill.
We eat at many Chinese restaurants which I might have normally given a wide berth - without any issue. My husband did turn his nose up at the fried chicken claws (I mean claws!) but otherwise everything was good!
As for the markets - they were very busy and the ones I saw reasonably clean - less rubbish lying around, yes they eat snakes (large tanks full of them alive), did not see any other exotic animals (not saying they were not there). Saw lots of fish and we even purchased a snake which the chef prepared for us at the Hotel. Was not overly keen on it, it tasted of aniseed.
What I dispute is your comments about what people eat, the whole world has different tastes and China is no different. I question some of these statements about bats, pangolins and orther exotics. It does happen, but not quite as much as the media would like to sensationalise it does. Neither are the conditions they are kept in any worse than the chickens at European battery farms - and I speak with experience!
I would have an abhorrence to eating dog - but remember we live in a society that is trying to push you to eat insects. We eat mussels, oysters (double yuk!), horse meat (not as good as beef), cows tongue, black pudding, haggis, guinea pig (no thank you), frogs legs (Superb), snails (better than whelks) and even hedgehog - was a delicacy in this country for gypsies as my mom once told me. These are just a few of the delicacies I knew of, but you like googling, so check out the worlds delicasies and you'll see its not just in China, even we have a few that many of us would turn our noses up at! Nose - I think that comes jellied as well!
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