On 7 September, many residents in Shenzhen have recently been centrally isolated and their pets are unable to follow their owners. According to the volunteers, they visit every two days and each household takes 10 minutes to feed the pets and clean up afterwards. They also take videos of the pets and send them to the owners to make them feel at ease and touched.

The community workers said, “Taking care of the pets left behind is a demonstration of humanistic care. We can’t leave our pets unattended, because they’re lives too, and that doesn’t give the residents in isolation peace of mind on the one hand, and it has a negative impact on the other.

As the COVID epidemic has been raging for three years, all parts of the country have been under tremendous pressure to balance prevention and control with economic development, and to reconcile and balance the protection of people’s livelihoods, and Shenzhen has provided full marks for the people of the country.

In March 2020, when the epidemic first appeared, Shenzhen legislated to ban the eating of dogs and cats, the first in the country and the world was amazed!

In April 2022, the country’s first pet shelter was built in Shenzhen to host pets for free for the newly isolated, with a building area of 1,500 square meters and a maximum capacity of 300 dogs and cats at no charge.

In these days of battling the virus, no pets in Shenzhen have been beaten to death with a stick, no young person in Shenzhen has fought over a green onion, no elderly person has cried that they don’t know where to buy vegetables, and no patient has died at the entrance of an emergency clinic because they were refused admission by the hospital.

And behind all the temperature and intensity is the level of civilization.

In an interview, Genlin, founder of the World Dog Alliance, said, “Shenzhen has preserved the seeds of civilization and hope for the whole country. In a time of limited resources, limited energy, and limited order, it is a remarkable act of civility. To be on par with the rest of the world, we must first look at the way we treat our dogs and cats, which not only demonstrates the tolerance and generosity of Shenzhen, but also the high quality of its people. I am very proud of Shenzhen because it is a beacon of light for our country!

Genlin called for “the trinity of human, animal and environment, and the sustainability of the planet”, and for people to live in harmony with nature, and people and animals to build a beautiful home in harmony. Shenzhen is undoubtedly the leader, the model and benchmark for the construction of ecological civilisation in China!