The Shenzhen activists trying to stop Yulin dog slaughter and revive coral reefs
Post Magazine meets the Shenzhen-based campaigners striving to bring change to China, whether it is raising awareness about the controversial dog-meat festival in Yulin or coral conservation in the Dapeng Peninsula
The map on my smartphone leads me to the kind of place that exists only in China; a no man’s land where the countryside and the city blend uncertainly into one another. A full moon illuminates the dirt track, the silhouettes of crooked trees flanking my route. Up ahead, high-rise towers loom while all around is junk scattered in the tall grass. I’m jumpy, my nerves jangling as the howling grows louder.
I arrive at a shack to find a rusty cage holding up to 1,000 dogs. The animals claw at one another as they fight for space. The stench of faeces, blood and bile is nauseating, the helpless baying disquieting. More overpowering still is the miasma of terror.
I’m here to rendezvous with Isobel Zhang Yuanyuan, a veteran animal-rights activist based in Shenzhen who has come to Yulin, in Guangxi, on behalf of ACTAsia, a British charity promoting animal welfare throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Zhang and a group of activists are discussing what to do with the blighted beasts. Eventually, two men enter the cage, lifting the most seriously injured dogs out. They begin to administer emergency treatment. One puppy is barely capable of moving, lying on its side and wheezing a heart-rending sigh. The paunchy owner of this vile lot is watching, smoking, seemingly unfazed by the grim scene.
“He doesn’t mind, these dogs have been sold,” explains Zhang.
The dogs are some of the lucky few, acquired by the Animal Hope & Wellness Foundation and apparently destined for new homes in the United States.
Then why is she here?