There’s a Chinese Festival Where a Dog is Carried Around and Worshipped for a Day!

Dogs are a part of our lives just as much as any other family member. We brag about them on our Instagram, cover our Facebook with photos of them, and talk about them like they’re one of our children. Because, well, they are. Dogs love us unconditionally, greeting us when we arrive home with happy, wagging tails. They are there when we get married, celebrate birthdays and holidays, and instantly jump into bed when it’s bedtime. Quite simply, dogs are the best.

A small town called Jianhe, in China’s southwestern Guizhou province, seems to agree because every year there is a local festival where a dog is dressed in human clothes and worshipped. Yep, worshipped. Sounds like our kind of festival! And certainly better than the cruel Yulin dog meat festival.

The festival is called Dog Carrying Day and local villagers dress one lucky dog up a shirt and hat to show respect for animals. 

The star of the show seems to love all of the deserving attention!

Villagers carry the dog while he sits comfortably on a throne made out of bamboo sticks, across a rice paddy, all to the sound of a beating drum. The festival started from an ancient tale of a hero dog who saved the village’s first settlers. The legend is that a dog was sent from heaven and stopped the villagers from dying of thirst by leading them to a water source.

While eating dog meat still happens in some parts of China, it’s clear that in Jianhe, dogs are treated with the love and respect they deserve. And in truth, the majority of citizens in China do not agree with the dog meat trade and have actively been working to end this barbaric practice. Great strides have been made to ban the dog meat trade. In April, we got word that Taiwan will become the first Asian country to ban the consumption of dog and cat meat – and we’re hopeful that similar momentum will lead to change elsewhere.

Know of a dog lover in your life? Be sure to send this article to them – we’re sure they will agree that all dogs should indeed be worshipped!

Lead image source: Twitter