Woman Pays $1,110 To Rescue Dogs From Being Eaten During Chinese Dog Eating Festival
Last week we told you about how thousands of dogs will be slaughtered and eaten at the annual Yulin Dog Festival in China this weekend. Despite worldwide protest and activist outreach, it happened again.
Activists from Animal Asia, Humane Society International, the social media campaign #StopYulin2015, and 70,000 protesters for #ItsNoFestival, among others, couldn’t stop the event from occurring this year.
However, there is a silver lining. According to Time, a woman named Yang Xiaoyun reportedly bought 100 dogs to keep them from being killed and eaten at this weekend’s festival. Yang would not say how much she spent on the dogs, but Time estimates that she paid around $1,100.
Yang, 65, is no stranger to the horrendous event. Last year, she also made a difference after she rescued about 350 dogs, paying 150,000 yuan ($24,160) to keep them from their fate.
Yang traveled around 1,500 miles from her home in northern China to buy the dogs. Despite the inhumanity in Yulin, she wants to open up a home for the rescued dogs around the vicinity.
Yang isn’t alone. Each year, animal activists descend on Yulin from all parts of the world to buy as many dogs as they can. For the most part, the dogs were pets who were stolen from their owners or else were strays. Roughly 10,000 dogs are killed annually for the festival.
Despite all the activism, many people from Yulin say they won’t stop eating dogs. Liang Xiaoli, who had returned home to Yulin to take part in the festiva told Reuters:
“This is one of our traditions. They [activists] criticise us, saying we don’t have compassion or humanity, but I think every person has different circumstances. You can’t just lump all people together. For example, if I think eating pork is really brutal, then no one can eat pork. That’s not on.”
The sad truth is that there are as many proponents to the festival as there are opponents, which could mean the Yulin event won’t likely end in the years to come. How many dogs do we have to buy to decrease the deaths? How much do we need to keep them alive? Let’s hear it for Yang and for all those other animal activists who buy dogs meant to be eaten from the Yulin community, residents who aren’t deterred from stealing, killing and then eating the helpless animals because they live in a country where eating dogs is entirely legal.
