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I am Maimai Ma, an overseas Chinese in Spain. Until November 2016, I had been a strong supporter, donor and defender of Yang Xiaoyun. My visit to her shelter in November 2016 led to the collapse of my confidence in her. The visit exposed the darkest secrets Yang had tried to hide from me and is still hiding from her donors in China and around the world.

How I Got to Know Yang

In 2006-2014, I lived in Tianjin for 8 years and one day in 2009 I read about Yang Xiaoyun. I was so touched by her story, a retired teacher who saved so many stray dogs. In July 2015, when I heard that Yang took in the dogs rescued on July 7, my admiration for her was greater.

Support for Yang

My admiration and support for Yang were such that I had since June 2015 become a fighter for Yang Xiaoyun in all the disputes where Yang was accused of charity fraud and neglect of her dogs. In all these disputes, I stood squarely with Yang believing that she could not be wrong and that she was a true hero. I was so devoted to her that I rejected any charges g directed at Yang. To me, Yang Xiaoyun is a “goddess of kindness.”

In about 18 months, day and night, I argued with countless people who accused Yang. I believed that those who questioned Yang had ulterior motives. Attacking Yang Xiaoyun, in my opinion, is attacking animal protection movement. It was helping the dog meat traders.

In September 2015, when an investigative report was released on Yang’s shelter and when a New York Times report confirmed the results of the investigation, The New York Times, I rejected the investigative report and the New York Times report as baseless.

The Very Reason of My Visit to Yang’s Shelter

When I was back to China in October 2016, I decided to visit Yang’s shelter and see the dogs I had helped and donated money for their care. I arrived in Tianjin on November 17; met Yang for lunch on the 18th and agreed to visit her shelter on the 19th. I was so looking forward to seeing the dogs.

Frankly, my visit to Yang’s shelter had two purposes:

1. To show support to “Aunty Yang” at a time when she was under attack; and
2. more importantly, to use my own visit to prove that the critics were wrong and that all the attacks on her were baseless.

The Shock

The entire visit was full of shocks. When I arrived at the gate of Yang’s shelter, she met me with a cold face and said that she normally did not allow people to go in. I was profoundly confused. Anything wrong? Reluctantly, Yang agreed to my entering on condition that I did not take any photos. I agreed and put my cell phone inside my pockets.

I was more shocked the very moment I saw the dogs. Their poor conditions were beyond description: serious skin problems, eyes covered with eye mucus, scratching and rubbing against the walls or posts, and begging for food or for touching from me. Seeing the poor conditions of the dogs, I was crying behind my sunglasses, shedding tears of pain, regret and self-blame.

This was no shelter. It was run-down, terribly smelly, and absolutely filthy.

Big and small dogs, males and females all were mixed together. In one enclosure with small dogs, the floor was littered with garbage. Dogs were dirty , lifeless, sick, and hungry.

When I saw a few poodles huddled together, I offered to help adopt them out overseas. Yang Xiaoyun’s answer shocked me: “This is a prison for dogs. Nobody shall take them out of here.” “And, I do not want anybody to watch me,” she said coldly.

All of a sudden, this “Mama Yang” or “Aunty Yang” who I have supported and donated for years looked very strange and even ugly.

Number of Dogs in the Shelter

There were no more than 300 dogs. I did not see workers or hired helpers there. I was asking in my mind “even with 300 dogs, how can she alone handle it?”

When I was about to leave, Yang Xiaoyun offered to buy me some Tianjin style tea sets and local specialties. When I declined her gift offer, her attitude changed for the worse.

My Suggestions and Yang’s Flat Refusal

I talked to several supporters of Yang Xiaoyun about the conditions of the dogs and the shelter. I urged them to persuade Yang Xiaoyun to make improvements. If not, she will lose all her donors. For the first time, I realize that stray dogs on the streets may be living a better life than those in her shelter.

I made four suggestions:

1. De-sex male dogs as soon as possible;
2. separate males from females;
3. separate dogs by sizes; and
4. send dogs with skin problems to animal hospitals and separate these dogs from the rest.

Yang Xiaoyun’s flat refusal convinced me that the charges against Yang were actually not baseless.

Very soon, Yang began to demonize me. I was no longer a “goddess of love” and “great and compassionate lady,” good words she used to shower on me. I turned into somebody she hated so much.

To Yang’s Donors Worldwide

What happened to me could happen to you if you ask how your donation has been used. I urge you to go and take a look to see if your hard-earned money has been spent on the dogs. I used to take whatever she said as truth.

My visit confirmed the many charges of her opponents:

• Yang has not been truthful.
• Donation has not been spent on the dogs.
• Dogs die in massive number in her shelter since no veterinary service is used.
• The findings of the 2015 investigation were true.
• The findings of the New York Times were true.
• The decision by major international animal protection groups to withdraw support for Yang is a correct move.
• Some 700 dogs from Yulin in 2015 and rescued on July 7, 2015 disappeared.
• No workers were hired (Her recent claim that she owes salary to workers is a lie.).
• Yang’s shelter is indeed more mysterious than North Korea as a social media post wrote.

Here are a few photos taken by others who were there with me.

To conclude

I once worshipped Yang Xiaoyun like a cult member. I refused to believe anything negative about her. I was one of her most devoted donors. And I fought with almost everybody who questioned her.

My visit to the shelter opened my eyes. She is no animal helper. Donations that she receives worldwide in the last few years have gone somewhere else.

Donors worldwide have the right to ask where the money has gone to.

In August 2015, when a UK registered charity visited Mrs Yang they were shocked at the filthy state of her so-called shelters with so many dogs who were clearly suffering terribly. NoToDogMeat quite rightly refused to hand over all the funds raised to help dogs rescued from Yulin to this self-confessed animal abuser who used to boast that she had never used a vet in 20 years.

By that time, Mrs Yang had already received £18,000 leaving £63,000 from an £81,000 total (in rounded-down figures). NoToDogMeat rightly gave the remaining funds to other rescuers, as they had the legal and moral duty to do. The bulk of the funds were given to a genuine Yulin rescuer with a well-kept shelter who truly cared about the wellbeing of the dogs and worked night and day to take good care of them.

On that same visit, caring Chinese activists had told the NoToDogMeat trustees that Mrs Yang had an enclosure, a type of large holding pen, in a desert type of place where dogs were left without anyone in attendance, and took them there. The dogs looked like they had been left there in the hot sun for days with no shelter, no food or water and some were already dead.

All the evidence points to the horrific truth about Mrs Yang, which is Xaioyun Yang is not a dog rescuer but is, in fact, a dog meat trafficker. Mrs Yang is not even registered as a charity but as a business. Mrs Yang has a record of over 20 years running filthy temporary shelters on derelict waste-grounds full of bacteria and parasites which are basically hellholes for dogs. Pictures and videos of her so-called shelters full of filthy rubbish show routinely there was no water available to the dogs through the very hot Chinese summers.

Over the years through many professionally made articles and videos, Mrs Yang has repeatedly made fantastic claims such as she had a massive number of dogs, the number varying from 300 to 6,000. Yet no one has ever seen her with more than about 200 dogs. This is despite Mrs Yang’s claims that she was constantly rescuing dogs, sometimes hundreds of dogs at once, which over the years would have amounted to many thousands of dogs. Mrs Yang is known not to rehome dogs, so where did all those dogs go? Mrs Yang has never given an explanation for this.

Mrs Yang repeatedly claimed her dogs were starving in order to get donations. Yet at the same time, Mrs Yang filmed herself for a fundraising video drawing £32,000 out of her bank to go to buy more dogs at Yulin, 1600 miles away.  Anyone with a brain would be asking how Mrs Yang, who had always claimed to be a lone rescuer who couldn’t drive, could manage to transport the dogs 1600 miles back to her shelter? And who was looking after her hundreds or thousands of dogs while she was away purportedly buying other dogs?

Due to many complaints about Mrs Yang’s shelter, including complaints from neighbours about the terrible smells of excrement and rotting body parts, the shelter was visited by a body of Chinese officials who carried out an investigation and found that it did not meet even the barest minimum standards of hygiene or indeed anything else. They published a very damning report which confirmed the shocking findings set out in the NoToDogMeat site report. In particular, they remarked that the ground was covered in excrement and there was no evidence of the shelter ever having been cleaned. They said they decided to set about and try to sweep up some of the excrement but it was not possible to find a broom. They posted their report on the internet and it is still online, where it can be read in English or in Chinese.

There have been many other reports, including eyewitness reports, videos and pictures which prove that Mrs Yang is not fit to run a shelter. If Mrs Yang had been in the UK or US or many other countries, she would have been shut down, in court and very probably in prison, a long time ago.

The main accusers and ringleaders of the structured hate campaign targeting NoToDogMeat for speaking out against Mrs Yang, namely Peter Egan and Daniel Allen, were asked by the Press regulatory body to provide evidence to back up the defamatory and dishonest claims in the Mirror article that they have used to attack NoToDogMeat, for example, that they were trolled. The only answer they were able to give is that they had “NO EVIDENCE” which proves absolutely conclusively that they lied. Not that NoToDogMeat lied, because they didn’t, but that Peter Egan and Daniel Allen lied. They were the ones that did the online trolling and they were the ones who lied. They were the ones who fought the corner of a con artist against a legitimate UK non-profit which is more stringently regulated than a US 501c3.

Moreover, their friend Andrew Penman a hack reporter for the Mirror published an article which disgracefully rehashed the lies that Peter Egan and Daniel Allen had told him and then Andrew Penman himself repeatedly lied. Even the Change.org petition they used extensively for their nefarious purposes is full of lies. More can be read about this in NoToDogMeat’s response to the Mirror article which is posted on their blog site.