Dog-eating festival divides Chinese society

It’s a grim vision. A man waves a live dog attached by the neck to a stick, taunting an old woman who wails at the sight, while a group of bystanders laugh at her concern.

The annual festival in Yulin in the southeastern province of Guangxi, featuring the sale of dogs to be eaten with lychees, is always a divisive affair, and this year the row has escalated into insults and fighting.

“In previous years, I can sell 70 to 80 dogs on the occasion and earn four yuan (47 cents) per kilogram of dog meat,” one vendor told the Xinhua news agency.

Butchered

Activists say 10,000 dogs are butchered and eaten during the annual festival, but increasingly animal welfare activists are expressing their anger at the event.

The Chinese have eaten dog meat for 7,000 years and it is widely believed to have medicinal qualities such as an ability to lower blood pressure, as well as to boost virility.

But prosperity has brought a greater focus on animal welfare in China, and there is growing tension between the traditional ways and the ethics of modernity.

One woman surnamed Yang bought more than 200 dogs at an average of around €50 a dog, and planned to bring them to her home city of Tianjin.

“We cannot stop local people celebrating the longstanding festival, but we can save as many dogs in our own way,” she said.

Online the reaction has been mixed, though chiefly negative.

“What a disgusting festival! How did they even make it a local festival? Yes, we eat pork or beef, but can the pig or cow make you happy? The dogs are our companions and bring us so much happiness, how can people eat them?” wrote one online commentator, Bobo Xiaoyu.

So divisive has the row become that the Communist Party's official organ, the People's Daily, weighed in with an editorial, saying the history of dogs' relationship with man in China was complicated, and that the idea of a dog as a companion was relatively new.