Chinese Woman Pays Over $1,000 To Save 100 Dogs From Yulin Dog Meat Festival, Plans To Rehome Dogs

A Chinese woman paid over $1,000 on Saturday to save 100 dogs from being eaten during the Yulin Dog Meat Festival. The animal rights activist plans to rehome the dogs.

Yang Xiaoyun, 65, paid approximately 7,000 yuan ($1,100 USD) to save around 100 dogs in the City of Yulin on Saturday, reports AFP. The animal rights activist says she plans to rehouse the dogs at her home in Tianjin, which is over 120 miles away from where the festival takes place. The former schoolteacher saved 50,000 yuan (over $8,000 USD) and traveled over 1,600 miles in an attempt to save as many dogs as she could from the 2015 Yulin Dog Meat Festival.

This is not the first time Yang Xiaoyun has saved animals from the annual Yulin festival. She spent 150,000 yuan ($24,000 USD) just last year to rescue 360 dogs and dozens of cats from slaughter at the festival, reports the Daily Mail.

According to the India Times, Yang converted her home in 1999 to an animal shelter called “Common Home for Stray Animals.” She currently houses approximately 1,500 dogs and 200 cats.

Warning: The rest of this article contains graphic content.

Each year, an estimated 10,000 dogs are brought to the city to be slaughtered and eaten. The Yulin Dog Meat Festival, which dates back to 2009, is held to celebrate the summer solstice, reports CNN.

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the dogs and cats brought to Yulin by the truckload each year are stolen pets or strays. The animals are forced to undergo barbaric treatment before ultimately being killed for human consumption.

“As many as possible are crammed into tiny, rusty wire cages that are handled with no regard for the living creatures inside. The animals may travel for days as far as 1,000 miles with no release from their hellish prisons and no food or water. Many are injured, emaciated, sick, and dying — or already dead. The dogs may be bludgeoned to death, have their throats slit, or be skinned, boiled, or burned alive. After gutting, the body is often soaked in water until it swells to disguise how skinny a dog may be, and the skin crisped with a blowtorch for a more appealing product.”

The international movement against the Yulin Dog Meat Festival is growing exponentially with help from social media. The Washington Post reports the hashtag #StopYulin2015 has been used nearly a million times over the past month. As the Inquisitr previously reported, comedian and animal rights activist Ricky Gervais recently called on his eight million Twitter followers to add their voice to the protest. As of June 21, Raise UR Paw’s Change.org online petition has garnered over 3.5 million signatures calling on the Governor of Yulin Guang Xi Province to put an end to the horrific event.

[Image via FACLC]