The film sheds light on stray dogs that have mostly been abandoned by their owners.
The Chinese adaptation of the movie based on the life of Japanese dog Hachiko has not just tugged at the hearts of canine lovers — it’s also renewed calls for adopting pets instead of purchasing them.
Titled “Hachiko,” the domestic version of the film is similar to the original story of the Japanese Akita dog who waited for his owner at a train station for more than nine years after his death. But in the movie, a Chinese professor from the southwestern city of Chongqing instead adopts a stray dog.
As pet ownership increases in China, instances of people abandoning their animals due to various reasons have also come to the surface. This has led to a rising number of stray dogs, with an estimated 40 million of them across the country.
“I realized I didn’t want to have a pet dog after watching the movie,” Chen Muyi, a 25-year-old office worker, told Sixth Tone outside a theater in Shanghai. “It kept reminding me that no matter what, we have to bid farewell to our beloved pets in the end. It’d be painful for me.” Continue to read the full article here
– This article originally appeared on Sixth Tone
