SHANGHAI: His bare head flickering with sweat, Zhi Xiang looks into the eyes of a homeless canine whose coat has gotten tangled in hefty downpour and says soothingly: "Let me trim your hair, doll."
The disheveled pooch is among scores of canines dragged away the roads of Shanghai by police and pressed in metal enclosures in a noxious holding region.
In excess of 20 little dogs are likewise packed into a yellow plastic carton; one canine is hauled in while inside a tied sack.
Be that as it may, for Zhi's intercession, they will all be put down very quickly.
Yet, Zhi is no conventional creature rescuer: he is a Buddhist priest and will give these canines another life either at his antiquated religious community or at a haven he runs in the Chinese city.
He as of now has almost 8,000 canines to take care of and care for. A couple hundred will at last be resettled in Europe or North America.
"I need to protect them since, in such a case that I don't, they will bite the dust without a doubt," said the 51-year-old, who briefly disposes of his priest's robes for an orange worker's suit as he offers inoculations to rumpled canines new off the roads.
Driven by his confidence, Zhi has been protecting creatures - generally canines yet in addition felines and different wanderers - since 1994.
It began when he started treating felines hit by vehicles out and about. In those days, there were not many homeless creatures, yet that has changed especially in the last four or five years, he said.
China's developing abundance has seen a blast in the pet market however a few group just surrender them when they would prefer not to really focus on them any longer, said Zhi.
"This isn't brought about by individuals who abhorrence canines, or by the public authority, yet by alleged canine sweethearts who don't have legitimate creature caring information," said Zhi.
Rearing among strays is making their numbers detonate.
State media said in 2019 that there were 50 million lost creatures in China and that number is generally multiplying every year.
With assistance from volunteers and his little labor force, Zhi keeps a few hundred canines at his Bao'en Temple, where he is the head priest and brilliant Buddhas look on peacefully against a setting of crying pooches.
The sanctuary, which is as yet a position of love, likewise has a room loaded up with 200 felines, alongside a ragtag assortment of chickens, geese and peacocks.
The air is an incomprehensible blend of creature scents and consuming incense.
Zhi keeps for the most part debilitated canines there and the rest go to a greater office somewhere else. The fortunate ones will track down another home with new proprietors.
The unfortunate ones, around 30 percent of the canines he protects, kick the bucket of infection or were at that point too debilitated to even think about saving.
Zhi is anything but a prepared vet yet his adoration for creatures, in the manner in which he strokes, relieves and kisses them, is self-evident.
The ceaselessly developing number of undesirable creatures is an immense monetary strain.
Zhi, who gets up at 4:00 am every day, gets no cash from the public authority. He has acquired from his folks and different priests and gets freebees from contributors.
He assesses that yearly expenses are around 12 million yuan ($2 million) and he needs 60 tons of canine food consistently.
"The issue is that I can't acquire any more cash now," he said.
Since 2019, Zhi has been sending a portion of the wanderers abroad to be resettled abroad.
Volunteers who can communicate in English utilize web-based media to contact a worldwide crowd, and around 300 canines have been set in the United States, Canada and different European nations including Germany.
The memory of those tricky sons of guns - their excursion from the roads and practically unavoidable passing to another life - carries tears to his eyes.
"I believe they're glad so I feel it's beneficial," he said. "Obviously I miss them."
One ongoing Saturday morning, Zhi was at Shanghai's worldwide air terminal to drop off a canine to a traveler who elected to take it's anything but another home in the US city of Seattle.
Wearing his priests' robes, Zhi holds the little canine in his arms until the latest possible second, mumbling "farewell, farewell".
He wipes away tears as the lady and canine vanish through the takeoff entryway.
"I have a fantasy that one day, when I have some spare energy, I need to travel to another country and visit them, take photographs with each canine that I saved," he said.
"So when I go downhill and can't walk, I have these photographs to take a gander at."