A CONTROVERSIAL annual festival that puts dog meat on the menu in a small southern Chinese city has once again met with anger and protests from animal rights activists.

    The Litchi and Dog Meat Festival, held yesterday this year to mark the summer solstice, the longest day on the Chinese lunar calendar, puts Yulin, a city with a population of 600,000 in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, into the media spotlight every June.

    Locals believe dog meat is no different from pork and they should be free to enjoy their tradition without finger-pointing while critics are concerned about animal cruelty and the health risks of eating dogs, with suspicions that many of the animals are stolen and reach the table without any inspections or quarantine.

    Protesters’ anger

    “Dogs are humans’ friends. Stop killing, stop buying, stop selling, stop consuming!” reads one of the text messages Zhong Peihua has frequently received over the past week.

    The owner of a dog meat restaurant in Yulin knows the annual war waged by animal welfare groups and dog lovers has started.

    Traders like Zhong have been getting hundreds of such text messages in recent days. They are encouraged to cancel the festival or even face threats against their businesses.

    “We are used to it. Some traders just turn off their phones,” said Zhong, whose restaurant has been open for 27 years.

    Bombarding traders with text messages is just one of the activists’ methods.

    Chen Tianhai, head of an animal protection society in Guangxi, makes regular trips to Yulin.

    On Saturday, he and other volunteers sat quietly in front of a market in the city, holding banners with the slogan “Stop Killing!”

    “Why can’t they just eat chicken or duck?” Chen asked.

    Since many countries have already banned the eating of companion animals like dogs and cats, he urges the local government to outlaw the festival.

    As some 10,000 dogs were reportedly set to be slaughtered in Yulin, it’s not surprising that people have tried various ways to rescue them.

    Animal-loving Yang Xiaoyun has adopted thousands of dogs that might otherwise have been served to diners. She went to Yulin in the run-up to the festival to try to buy more. “Who knows what risk this supposed delicacy poses to people’s health?” she asked.

    She paid about 7,000 yuan (US$1,100) to save around 100 dogs Saturday, Web portal Netease reported. Reports said that Yang, 65, plans to rehouse the dogs at her home nearly 2,000 kilometers away in Tianjin.

    The event has also ignited fury on social media. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese Web users, including many celebrities, have been vocal in opposing the festival on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblog.

    According to an ongoing poll by Sina Weibo, 87.1 percent of the 6,317 people who had responded by 3 p.m. Monday think China should enact laws to prohibit animal abuse while 12.9 percent say it is not necessary.

    Activists say the slaughter is cruel. An online campaign to ban the festival has been signed by more than 3.8 million people so far and has attracted considerable support this year from celebrities both domestic and foreign.

    Celebrities including British comedian Ricky Gervais have spoken out on Twitter with the hashtag #StopYuLin2015. Chinese pop star Chen Kun and actor Yang Mi have said they are joining the campaign on microblogging site Weibo. Chinese actor Fan Bingbing and others posted a video online against the festival.

    Teach an old dog new tricks

    Chen Taotao, deputy head of Yulin’s food and drug administration, said the local government has never supported the festival, which is “just a gathering of locals on summer solstice.”

    The event started in the summer of 1995 as vendors put up banners reading “Welcome to the dog-eating festival” at a food street to attract visitors, said Wei Wanli, an employee with the Yulin veterinary bureau.

    It was promoted more strongly after 2009 when a dog dish won a prize in the city’s food festival.

    The Yulin government has promised to crack down on anyone caught stealing dogs and to ensure food safety and has banned public slaughter.

    City officials have distanced themselves from the gathering. “Some residents of Yulin have the habit of coming together to eat litchis and dog meat during the summer solstice,” the city’s news office wrote on microblogging site Sina Weibo on Thursday.

    “The ‘Summer Solstice Litchi and Dog Meat Festival’ is a commercial term, the city has never [officially] organized a ‘dog meat festival’,” it added.

    But the question of whether dog meat is a delicacy or an example of cruelty remains divisive — a conflict between folk custom and animal protection.

    With an increasing number of China’s pet-owning middle-class adjusting their diets, more Chinese, especially the young, see dogs as friends not food, said Xie Pingxiang, deputy chief of the Guangxi Traditional Culture Studies Association.

    The practice of eating dog is gradually dying out in other Chinese provinces, including Jiangxi, Yunnan and Hubei.

    In 2011, Zhejiang Province banned the Jinhua Hutou Dog Meat Festival after denunciations at home and abroad.

    Changes also seem to be coming to Yulin. Five years ago, Zhong Peihua could sell 30 dogs a day, but now he’s lucky if the number is five.

    Other traders interviewed by Xinhua said they were selling about a fifth as many dogs as they were five years ago.

    “You can see people’s minds are changing,” said Zhong, whose son and daughter refuse to eat dog meat.(Xinhua-Agencies)