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HSINCHU: A festival in Taiwan where huge pigs are slaughtered and displayed draws smaller crowds as animal rights activists alter perceptions of the controversial tradition.
The annual ritual is a cultural cornerstone for the island’s Hakka community, which makes up about 15 percent of Taiwan’s population.
But it has long been a polarizing custom.
Local Hakka families compete to display the largest pig, with the winner taking home a trophy.
With a fanfare of traditional music played with gongs and horns, 18 slaughtered pigs were transported by trucks on Monday (September 7) to the Hsinpu Yimin temple in the north of the island.
The heaviest weighed a whopping 860 kg, three times the average of adult pigs.
The corpses, their bristles shaved and adorned with ornaments, were displayed upside down, their heads with pinecones stuck in their mouths, dwarfed by their swollen torsos.
After the party, the owners take the corpses home and the meat is distributed to friends, family and neighbors.
Local residents look at offerings of fattened pigs during the competition to mark the annual ghost festival at Yimin Temple in Hsinchu, northern Taiwan, on September 7, 2020 (Photo: Sam Yeh / AFP).
Tseng Jia-yun’s family spent three years fattening their pig, which was slaughtered last week weighing 400 kg.
The sacrifice fulfilled the wishes of his 86-year-old grandmother.
“As a Hakka, I am proud of this divine swine culture, it is worth preserving,” he told AFP, describing the concerns of animal rights groups as “nonsense.”
“There is no cruelty to animals, contrary to the rumors that are spreading,” he added.
ANTICIPATED RITUAL?
Defenders of animal rights disagree.
They say that the heaviest pigs are force-fed, often in small cages to the point where morbidly obese animals cannot get up.
“The pigs are so heavy that they can’t even stand up,” said Lin Tai-ching, director of the Taiwan Animal and Environment Society.
Lin has been documenting the “holy pig” festival for the past 15 years and says attitudes are beginning to change.
The crowds have started to diminish and the number of sacrifices has been drastically reduced.
“Fifteen years ago there were more than 100 pigs in the contest, compared to 37 this year,” he told AFP.
The number of animals over 600 kg had also plummeted, he added.
Local residents look at offerings of fattened pigs during the competition to mark the annual ghost festival at Yimin Temple in Hsinchu, northern Taiwan, on September 7, 2020 (Photo: Sam Yeh / AFP).
Two presentations this year consisted of packets of rice displayed in the shape of pigs, a sign that some participating families are rejecting animal sacrifices.
Researchers and locals say that while the festival dates back centuries, the tradition of slaughtering fattened pigs is a more recent phenomenon.
The Hakka are one of many ethnic groups from mainland China that settled in Taiwan over the past hundreds of years.
Every summer, the Hsinpu Yimin Temple commemorates a group of Hakka who died defending their villages during a period of political upheaval in the late 18th century.
However, it was during the Japanese colonial occupation of Taiwan in the early 20th century that slaughtering of fattened pigs became a common part of the celebrations.
The custom became turbocharged in the 1980s and 1990s with pigs getting bigger and bigger.
“The Yimin festival is to honor our ancestors who died defending our homeland, a show of loyalty and brotherhood,” Tseng said.
Lin and other animal rights activists say they have no desire to end Hakka cultural customs.
Instead, they want to see the cruelest elements of the festival tamed.
“We are not against slaughtering pigs,” he said, “but we are against competitions based on the weight of an animal.”
