The end of the twentieth century has witnessed a strong fascination with cannibalism in literature, film, and cultural studies, particularly in the West. Postcolonial theorists argue that cannibalism is a myth which expresses Western cultural biases, a myth created by European imperialists to justify their colonizing ambitions. Since they do not believe that cannibals existed, these theorists turn to dismantle ethnohistorical accounts and anthropological studies of cannibalism and claim they are false. These critics also adopt a rather dogmatic paradigm: the colonialists have political power and dominance, and thus they can control and exploit those colonized “others.” This paper argues that we need to be cautious about applying these theories to China. These theories have limited use in discussing the portrayals of cannibalism by modern writers such as Lu Xun, Wang Jingzhi, Yu Hua, Mo Yan, Zheng Yi, and Liu Zhenyun. A close analysis of Liu Zhenyun’s “Reminiscing 1942” (1993) in fact reveals that the author reverses the postcolonialist paradigm: instead of condemning the “imperialists,” he implies that under certain circumstances some Chinese people would rather be colonized by Western or Japanese “imperialists” than be controlled by their erratic authoritarian government.