Seriously?
Actual footage of a custom known as “killing a dog to consecrate a car”—a practice still found in parts of China where a dog is slaughtered and its blood sprinkled around the vehicle to pray for traffic safety. It is said that the blood of a black dog is believed to ward off evil spirits and misfortune; thus, to prevent accidents and bring good luck after taking delivery of a new car, people behead a live dog and scatter its blood around the tires and bodywork.
The very idea is utterly grotesque. It is completely beyond my capacity to comprehend.
Video
A legal vacuum allowing the recurring ritual of slaughtering dogs to consecrate vehicles.
This is not the first time a ritual involving sprinkling dog blood on a new vehicle to pray for safety has taken place. In 2022, a taxi driver in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region performed a similar ritual; although the employer attributed the act to “local custom,” they faced criticism and subsequently reprimanded the driver. This practice has been a recurring topic in automotive media since around 2017, and the recent incident in Fujian Province also sparked a wave of online criticism in China, with many condemning it as “too cruel” or decrying the adherence to superstition in the modern era.
Despite such backlash, there are few legal avenues to penalize the act itself. China lacks a unified national law prohibiting animal cruelty; regulations are limited to piecemeal measures found in statutes such as livestock rearing standards and wildlife protection laws. Even in a 2002 incident where bears at the Beijing Zoo were doused with sulfuric acid, the case was prosecuted as property damage because no law existed at the time to punish animal cruelty. While opinions on such customs may vary, the long-standing absence of a legal framework to crack down on these practices is considered a contributing factor to the recurrence of such incidents.
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