YULIN is where China’s dog meat festival is held every June on the summer solstice, the longest day on the Chinese lunar calendar. But what does the public really think about eating dog meat?

    On Twitter, thousands of tweets bearing the hashtag #StopYuLin2015 were posted every hour Friday alone, with many users calling on their followers to sign a petition to stop the Yulin festival.

    As of 3 p.m. Monday, more than 3.8 million users had posted messages opposing the practice. Similar campaigns were also seen on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblog website.

    #Yulindogmeatfestival was used in more than 350,000 posts, making it the highest-trending hashtag on the issue.

    Topics with more suggestive tags such as #saynotoYulindogmeatfestival attracted wide attention and many retweets.

    However, contrary to the buzz on Twitter, data revealed by search engine Baidu paints a different picture; suggesting a decline in interest in the festival. According to Baidu Index, searches for “dog meat” over the past seven days had dropped 38 percent year on year, while “dog meat festival” had 57 percent fewer searches.

    However, it revealed that the most-asked questions related to dog meat were, “How to cook it” and “when is the festival.”(Xinhua)