Wang Yan once ran a successful iron and steel business in northeastern China. Today, he’s broke, and he says he’d make the same choice all over again.
In 2012, Wang lost his own dog. Desperate to find him, he searched everywhere, eventually spending a week inside his hometown’s dog slaughterhouse in Changchun, hoping his dog might have ended up there.
He never found him. But what he found instead changed the course of his life.
Inside that slaughterhouse, Wang witnessed dogs being beaten, dragged across the floor, and killed for meat, many of them still aware as it happened.
Dog meat has long been considered a traditional dish in parts of Chinese culture, believed by some to carry health benefits, and much of it reportedly comes from stray or stolen dogs sold into the trade.
Wang couldn’t unsee what he’d witnessed. That same year, he used his fortune to purchase the abandoned slaughterhouse and an adjoining steel factory in Helong, Changchun, transforming it into a shelter called the Changchun Animal Rescue Base.
Since then, Wang says he has helped rescue more than 2,000 dogs from slaughterhouses and the streets, with the shelter currently caring for around 200 dogs at a time, most of them saved directly from the same fate his own search once led him toward.
Keeping the shelter running hasn’t come cheap. Wang says he has spent over 3 million yuan, more than $470,000, on food, medicine, and care for the dogs, and has gone into debt doing it.
Rather than accept cash donations for himself, Wang has said he only asks for supplies to support the dogs in his care.
“I do not accept monetary donations. I only hope that kind-hearted people will be able to donate a few supplies to help build a home for these dogs,” he said in a past interview.
A man who lost one dog ended up giving thousands more a second chance at life, even if it cost him everything he had.
Would you give up your fortune to save thousands of animals in need?
Source:
1. lifegate – “Wang Yan, the Chinese millionaire who spent his entire fortune to save dogs from slaughterhouse”
2. Wikipedia – “Wang Yan”