A monk saved more than 5,500 stray dogs and cats in 27 years: I was so busy that I didn't have time to pray.

Originally I am the extraordinary gentleman.

About 50 kilometers from downtown Shanghai, Fengxian hides an old and dilapidated temple called the Annunciation Temple.

Unlike temples in the downtown area, there is no golden-hued palace, no solemn monks in robes, and no chanting of Buddhist scriptures.

But there is a monk in a red auto mechanic’s uniform who has rescued more than 5,500 stray dogs and cats.

This man is the abbot of the hospital, Zhixiang. Although he is the abbot, he is so busy that he does not have time to chant the sutra.

He is busy rescuing and caring for stray cats and dogs.

He got involved with stray cats and dogs in 1993, when he saw an injured cat on an elevated road. It was probably accidentally run over by a car, which broke its leg and left a bloody mark on the ground while crawling.

He felt particularly sinful and heartbroken, but he was helpless and didn’t know what to do. When he returned to the temple, he blamed himself internally.

So he thought, in the future, when he encountered a similar situation, he must save it to make his conscience feel better. Thus, from the first time he saved a stray cat, he set out on the road to help animals.

As of November 2020, he has rescued more than 5,500 stray cats in total, and the years of rescue have made Zhixiang’s body seriously exhausted.

In fact, he didn’t intend to rescue so many at first, but started rescuing stray cats and dogs around the temple, and many people knew about it, and as word spread, people sent stray cats and dogs over, and even left their sick domestic cats and dogs here.

He had seen several people who abandoned cats and dogs in front of the temple in the surveillance camera, but the other side was righteous and said: you are not here to accept cats and dogs?

He was furious and stressed loudly that only dogs are rescued and not collected here.

“What’s collecting is, you don’t want to give them to someone else, that’s collecting, it’s like collecting junk for garbage, but not dogs, dogs have dignity.”

But even so, there were still large numbers of people dropping off their dogs and cats in such large numbers that the number of dogs and cats proliferated far beyond the load. Master Zhixiang thought of giving up a few times, but his heart softened again when he looked into their eyes.

“Not only is our life a life, but so is theirs, and I want to do my part to keep it alive, or at least to live it out peacefully and quietly.”

If it’s just rescue that’s fine, the really tough part is taking care of it.

“After rescuing a dog, the first step is to count the number of strays, separating the sick ones from the healthy ones, and the males from the females, so that the family can stay together. After this sorting, they are also vaccinated separately under the skin, then given internal deworming pills, then external deworming pills are applied to the back of the stray dog, and finally placed in different cages depending on the situation.”

With so many stray cats and dogs living together, even food is a problem.

“More than 5,500 dogs and cats eat at least 35 tons of food a month, some of which is purchased from pet food companies, and some is donated by businesses and individuals. Most of it is temporary food.”

“Previously bought the most high-grade one, is imported grain from the United States, the market sell more than 60 yuan a pound. As a result, he (the distributor) had four tons that were about to expire and sold it to us for $3 a pound. It doesn’t matter to us whether it’s due or not, 4 tons of grain will be finished in a few days.”

The cold winter has arrived, and winterizing stray dogs and cats is also a headache.

“Cats and dogs need a lot of mattresses to survive the winter, after loving people knew about this, they spontaneously donated 200 pieces of bedding, and one cut two became 400 pieces, which can also meet part of the demand.”

In addition, there are a lot of difficulties, space, capital, labor and so on is a big mountain on the body of Master Zhixiang, in which just to rent space to place stray animals, almost spent all the savings, although the help of caring people but still difficult.

Moreover, in order to help stray cats and dogs, he sacrificed all his personal time, getting up at 4 o’clock every day and working until 11 o’clock at night, almost no rest time, he mocked himself.

If you don’t have enough time, you can borrow from the morning and the evening, if you don’t have enough energy, you can borrow from the future, and if you don’t have enough manpower, you can only ask the Goddess of a Thousand Hands.

The people around him felt unworthy for him: no one is forcing you to help stray cats and dogs, so why do you put yourself through so much trouble?

But he laughed and said, “You’re right, no one is forcing me to do this, and no one will scold me if I don’t do it, but I just can’t get past the hurdle in my own heart.

How warm human nature is, how cruel it is.

While Master Zhixiang is working day and night to rescue cats and dogs, some people are abandoning and abusing cats and dogs in the background.

Abused dog in the hospital

Too cruel to put in pictures but really horrible

“Many of the stray dogs and cats brought to me were not only abandoned, but even abused. Some of the dogs had their hamstrings cut, some had cuts all over their bodies, and some had burns all over their bodies.

On the most recent day, I rescued 126 dogs with volunteers, many of whom were beaten to a bloody pulp, had lost all their teeth, were missing a leg, and the poorest dog had a malignant tumor the size of a fist.”

Dogs who had to have their legs amputated after being mutilated

No further damage after surgery

Sometimes, ignorant kindness is worse than real malice.

Master Zhixiang once saw an ignorant rescue team that transported dogs on a hot day and did not take any measures to ventilate the car, resulting in the death of all the dogs.

Whenever he learned of such an incident, he would be so angry that he would curse people. Although he said that monks don’t lie, his temper really exploded a little after seeing such incidents.

Specially brought in for grooming in order to be adopted.

With so many dogs and cats in rescue, open adoption was inevitable.

In the beginning, Chih-Hsiang’s adoption standards were very low, as long as you say you want to adopt, you can basically take them away.

But to the disappointment of Master Chih-Hsiang, there were a few people who came to us and sincerely said they wanted to adopt a few newborn puppies.

After picking and choosing, all but the ugliest of them were adopted, except for the ugliest, which no one wanted to adopt and “got away” with staying in the monastery, and the other three were adopted.

By the time Master Zhixiang returned to visit, they had either disappeared, or had been accidentally raised to death.

“That kind of indifferent attitude is very chilling. But how much more can you expect these people to take care of them? It’s cheap for them to get something for free, and when they don’t have it, they just get another one.”

“There’s not even a one percent chance of adoption right now. It’s not that it’s not open. It’s that many people adopt on the spur of the moment, but then abandon them when they move or get married.

It’s hard to find people who can take care of dogs and cats for the rest of their lives when they have more than ten years to live.”

“I may only be able to feed them, and sometimes I have to keep them in a cage, but at least they are still alive, so what’s the point of adopting them out and killing them?”

Having been through this, Master Zhixiang has raised the bar for adoption in order to screen out the irresponsible.

He has a few basic requirements for adopters: 1) get a license to love it and legalize it, 2) deworm it, and 3) spay/neuter it. The first two are almost always done.

But very few people will do sterilization, and there are even people who take the “sterilization” point to attack Master Zhixiang, thinking that sterilization is the cruelty to cats and dogs, and also said that sterilization is “animal cruelty”.

Pregnancy and dog ownership do not conflict

Master Zhixiang remembered that his most recent temper tantrum was when a bald man refused to neuter the family’s dogs.

That day, when Zhixiang and the volunteers were moving the dogs and cats, a bald man next to them recognized the two puppies he had abandoned two days before and touched them. When Master Zhixiang saw this, he yelled out.

“Last year you were the one who shoved the puppies in, and this year you’re the one who let the bitches give birth and then left them alone! People like you, after reincarnation, still can’t grow hair!”

That’s about the cruelest thing a monk can say.

About to say goodbye to the dog at the airport

There has always been controversy about sterilization. Those who are able to raise children can of course choose not to be sterilized, but in reality there are often several situations.

At that time, I thought I was capable, then some changes happened and said that I was not able to do it and abandoned; because I did not want to spend money on neutering and deliberately discredited neutering.

After all, sterilization is nearly $1000, which is definitely a large expense for cats and dogs.

If one is not able to raise and neuter at the same time, such a person is not eligible to adopt.

“The first thing you need to do is to take care of your dog, and you’ll be able to do that. I’ll save one if I can, but if this goes on, even if the nursing park has more money, it won’t be able to save all the dogs.”

Unfortunately, it is the dogs that can’t be saved and the people who can’t be saved.

Now what Master Zhixiang wants most is to send stray cats and dogs to countries that have animal protection laws to endorse.

For example, in Germany, because the German animal protection law stipulates that if you want to adopt a dog or cat, the adopter must sign the relevant documents for animal protection, and cannot abuse or abandon the pet after adoption. Abandonment of a dog is punishable by a fine of 90,000 euros, and serious abuse of a dog is punishable by up to two years in prison.

But getting a dog on a plane is a big challenge.

“The most important thing we need now is flight volunteers, those who travel abroad, visit friends and relatives, or return home to visit family, we need them as our flight volunteers to be able to take the dog abroad, the process is not complicated.

All we need to do is let us know right after he booked his ticket, and then we’ll go ahead and book that position for the dog based on his ticket information.”

But for more than 5,500 dogs and cats, only a small percentage are fortunate enough to be sent abroad; the rest are the vast majority.

For the vast majority of the remaining dogs that can’t be adopted, Zhixiang has a solution.

The first solution is to select qualified dogs to be police guard dogs, rescue dogs, etc., and let them be of value. The second option is to keep them in the nursing park forever.

“We can give them old age,” says Zhixiang with conviction.

In the process of urbanization, stray dogs and cats have become a serious social problem, and it is very risky for individuals to get involved in social problems.

The first thing he faces is misunderstanding from the outside world, and many people suspect that he has an ulterior motive.

“I don’t have a bank card or a house, the only thing I have is a card to make a posthumous donation.”

The second is that the existence of stray dogs will have an impact on the city’s environment, so some people advised Zhixiang, do not accept this hot potato.

However, the potato is hot, but someone has to pick it up.

“Stray dogs outside, more unsafe for people, here I can at least guarantee that the dog can live, and will not pose a threat to people.”

“Why do cities have stray dogs and cats? Rather than the responsibility of the relevant departments, it is the responsibility of some self-proclaimed cat and dog lovers who adopt a dog when they want to, and discard it at will when they don’t want to.

A female dog thrown outside, and did not do sterilization, a year can give birth to eight or nine, resulting in stray two, three, five generations, so that has been going on before the problem of stray cats and dogs.”

For Zhixiang’s behavior, to this day there will be many people do not understand, after all, he is the abbot, represents the image of the Shanghai Grace Temple, so busy that he does not have time to read the scriptures, not like a monk.

The monk has not been home for decades.

But Zhixiang was firm.

“If all the monks in the past generations thought of themselves, who would support us? If you don’t do it for the sake of the heavens, you can only be a fly. Buddhism, Buddhism, monasteries, he takes nothing for silence, not silence for tranquility.”

Sweep the floor for fear of hurting the lives of mole crickets, moths flinging moths to lanterns.

As a monk, one should ritualize and chant Buddhist scriptures every day, which is the practice of a monk, but rescuing stray cats and dogs is not another kind of practice.

“Most of my life’s path has been completed, and I have wasted my time with no accomplishments, so I have no plans for the rest of my life.

This is the practice of Master Zhixiang.

Address: No. 4366, Yanqian Highway, Qingcun Town, Fengxian District, Shanghai.

Thank you, Master Zhixiang, for the interview!

This article is published with permission.

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Original title: “A monk 27 years to save more than 5500 stray cats and dogs: I am so busy that I do not have time to read scriptures —

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