Dog Fight in China.

It's eaters vs. lovers in a melee on the highway:

The mutts were destined for the dinner table - all 520 of them crammed onto a truck hurtling down a Beijing highway toward waiting restaurants in northeastern China.

Then fate intervened in the form of a passing driver, an animal lover who spotted the truck and angrily forced it off the road.

From there, things began spiraling out of control. News of the confrontation hit the Chinese blogosphere, sending more than 200 animal activists flocking immediately to the highway. Traffic on the road slowed to a standstill. Dozens of police officers were called in. Animal activists, however, kept arriving with reinforcements, carrying water, dog food, even trained veterinarians for a siege that ended up lasting 15 hours....

The mob of dog lovers finally won the standoff by pooling together more than $17,000 to pay off the truck driver. But their victory was quickly eclipsed when they soon realized they had no idea where to house the hundreds of loud, wild and decidedly not-housebroken canines....

[D]og transporter Hao Xiaomao said he lost a small fortune, more than $3,000, after being forced into the deal. Worst of all, because he failed to deliver, no one has been willing to hire him since.

"I still don't understand what was immoral about my shipment. People also eat cow and sheep. What's the difference?" he asked. "They were just a group of rich bullies who own pets and have nothing better to do."...

In China, poor people have been eating dogs for a long time and keeping a pet dog is an activity associated with the rich. Rescuing dogs might seem to us like championing the weak, but in China, the strong vs. weak argument is flipped, because the dog eaters are the poor, and the dog lovers are the pet-owning rich. Or so it seems.