You say cute, people in Sichuan province say 'tasty.'

China's Sichuan province is known for pandas, spicy hot pot and beautiful women. It's also known for its love of eating rabbits—specifically, rabbit heads.

Now, in order to satisfy appetites there, one local company has begun to import rabbits from France.

"Sichuan people really like eating rabbits," said Lei Jiayou, marketing head for Hage Group, a Sichuan-based company that sells rabbit meat. Nearly all the rabbits bred for their meat in China are sent to Sichuan for consumption, he said, including many from the provinces of Shandong, Henan and Shanxi. "But they are still not enough," he said.

Rabbit heads displayed for customers at Shangliu Old Mother Rabbit Heads in Chengdu, Sichuan. Olivia Geng/The Wall Street Journal

Why rabbits from France? "French rabbits are highly recognized as having the best quality in the world. Their farms raise rabbits very scientifically," he said. "They have formal standard to breed rabbits so the disease rate of the rabbits is comparatively lower," adding that they are slightly meatier as well. They're not cheap: on average, said Mr. Lei, a stud rabbit costs 2,000 yuan ($320).

In an interview with China Real Time, Mr. Lei said the company wasn't planning to sell the imported rabbits directly to the consumers. "We'll let them have babies, and we won't sell the meat until the fourth generations," he said.

Globally, about some 200 million tons of rabbit meat are produced a year, says Luo Dong, director of the Chinese Rabbit Industry Association. China consumes about 30% of the whole production, he said, with 70% of such meat—or some 420,000 tons a year—going to Sichuan province as well as the neighboring municipality of Chongqing. If that's the case, on average, every resident in the region (home to 110 million) would consume 8.4 pounds of rabbit meat per year.

France and China share a number of similarities: both have immense pride in their cultures, which includes a taste for exotic meats, such as rabbits. But unlike the French, people in Sichuan take love of the rabbit to a new level, focusing mostly on their heads.

"Rabbit heads are just like duck necks," says Yang Xiaomei, a restaurant manager at a Chengdu branch of Shuangliu Laoma Tutou, or Shuangliu Old Mother Rabbit Heads, a well-known eatery in Sichuan. "There are so many little bones. The more you suck, the tastier the rabbit heads are."

How does one eat a rabbit's head? One waitress at the restaurant gave China Real Time a tutorial.

First, crack open the jaw and tear the whole head into two halves. Second, eat the cheeks, tongue and chin. That's the easier part. The hardest part is the top of the head. To get at that meat, the waitress gently bit the skull, peeled off the interior membranes, and then ate the exposed brain.

The last step, she said, is eating the eyes, which is made more challenging by surrounding bones. "You just need to be more patient," she said. After finishing, she sucked the oil from her fingers clean.

When asked whether she thought eating rabbit heads was disgusting, she shook her head. "People feel disgust only because they are scared. When you really eat it, you'll like it," she said. "A couple of days ago, a foreign guy came here and ate our rabbit heads," she said. "He liked it very much and that evening he asked us to send more heads to his hotel, which cost him at least another 200 yuan ($32) for the taxi fee."

Rabbit heads are cheap: at Ms. Yang's restaurant, each rabbit head costs just 7 yuan ($1.20). At least 1,000 to 2,000 rabbit heads are sold every month, the restaurant says. "Numbing-spicy" is the most popular flavor, says Ms. Yang, referring to a popular kind of Sichuan spice.

According to the restaurant, rabbit meat isn't just tasty: It's good for you, too. A sign on the wall declares that the meat has a high levels of protein and is low in calories and cholesterol.

Apart from rabbit heads, other rabbit dishes in China are also popular, including stewed rabbit, spicy diced rabbit, BBQ-style rabbit, etc.

But in Sichuan, the rabbit head is king. Even the word used to describe eating rabbit heads in Sichuan dialect—ken tu tou—shows the affection people feel for the dish. As locals explain, rabbit heads are tricky to eat, and the act of doing so can look a lot like you're smooching a rabbit skull—to consume one, you need to keep turning the head and biting it emphatically with your mouth. In Sichuan dialect, ken tu tou also means 'to kiss.'

-- Olivia Geng

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article misspelled the name of a rabbit-head eatery branch in Chengdu. It has since been corrected.

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