Vietnam Festival: Live Pig Chopped In Half To Honor Village Deity (WARNING: GRAPHIC)

Nem Thuong's annual pig-chopping festival is, as one might imagine, a very bloody affair.

WARNING: GRAPHIC FOOTAGE BELOW

Each year, on the sixth day of the lunar new year, the villagers of a town about 25 miles north of Vietnam's capital, Hanoi, organize a festival to honor their local guardian deity, Doan Thuong. The celebrations include traditional festival features such as a march and live music, but one part of the ceremony is not for the faint of heart.

According to Reuters, a live pig is shuttled around the village before being placed on the ground on its back. Assistants hold ropes attached to the pig's legs, spreading the animal's appendages apart to expose its belly. A man wielding a large blade then chops the pig in half, and the villagers rush to smear the blood on bank notes, hoping for good luck in the new year.

The practice has been condemned by activists inside Vietnam and abroad.

For more photos of the festival, check out ChinaSMACK.

WARNING: The video below contains GRAPHIC footage.

In the video below posted by AsianTown.net, watch footage of the pig being chopped in half:

Comments

[evecaren]

09:14 AM on 04/26/2012

Barbaric and cruel does not begin to describe this annual pig-chopping festival. I am horrified
by the fact that this "festival" is an annual event. It's bad enough if the pig were dead, but this
is being done to a living, breathing, feeling mammal, in the medieval belief that this will bring
them luck. I hope some organization will step in and stop this barbaric ritual. Shame on these
villagers for participating in such a gruesome, disgusting, barbaric event.

[Eduardo Acosta]

07:16 PM on 04/13/2012

Why don't you learn about their culture and try to understand it before judging it. I'm use they eat the pig and it seems this is not much different from the festival of Dionysus in Ancient Greece where they pretty much did the same thing to a goat. If you eat meat you have no room to talk.

[Krystal Graves]

08:34 PM on 03/29/2012

why in your mind would think this is a good to do for a celebration, to kill a pig from the middle use the blood for good luck!!!!! that just sick, that just wrong that more like bad luck. that poor pig, i am getting very sick over this video. things like this needs to stop!!

[Siebenstein]

04:25 AM on 03/27/2012

As an animal protector and lover ,I honestly wish all these monsters involved in animal torture throughout this section an agonizing and truly painful life and subsequently death. May you rot in your own hell, never rise above your misery, and and should I come across one of you be assured I will not help you whatever it might be. I might give you an additional kick and remind you of the reason why. That type of our species should not be around. The world would be a better place without this wannabe species sample. Vietnam; one of the country's that can go under.

[Eduardo Acosta]

07:12 PM on 04/13/2012

You're an idiot.

[Lost Soal]

05:22 PM on 04/21/2012

Shall we just say, PORK CHOPS?

[Siebenstein]

04:15 AM on 03/27/2012

Most Asian, but also other underdeveloped countries are distgustingly cruel to animals and still call themselves "human".

[Siebenstein]

04:14 AM on 03/27/2012

I am disgusted by most people who live in our current world. They do not deserve to breathe, and I would be amused to see them undergo what they do to other creatures. How are they deserving of taking another breath ???

I think I need to vomit.

[Siebenstein]

04:55 AM on 03/27/2012

There must be another species that just looks like a human but isn't, because I truly do not belong to any of the samples and others that I constantly read about.

[Opposition Party]

01:16 AM on 02/12/2012

I think we should call for stopping traveling to Vietnam, and send them a message that the animal cruelty cannot go on without notice.

If you want to see more animal cruelty, please see this link, and see how the North Vietnamese celebrate an act of animal cruelty and they call it as a festival

http://vietnamnet.vn/vn/xa-hoi/59483/ve-le-hoi-choi-trau-xem-canh-xe-thit-ong-cau.html

[Danny Dan]

01:18 AM on 02/09/2012

Pigs are interesting animals.This is sick for sure.
Smithfield farms is known for much worse.
They shock the pigs first before they are bolied,alive
in 140 degree water.then they are turned into bacon.
I'm glad I dont eat much pork but its free range if I do.

[Fred303]

11:44 PM on 02/08/2012

I don't feel well, I feel sick. that was just nasty................

[Lost Soal]

05:27 PM on 04/21/2012

Makes you wish you could take the place of that animal?
Just think of that as you!

[Weeklong Zero]

10:53 PM on 02/08/2012

What I'm really sad at is the racism of some commentators, viewing the Vietnamese people as barbaric, uncivilized, and inhumane. Hey listen we do the same thing in the US, we just call it bacon.

[Nino Bookman]

07:46 PM on 02/08/2012

Man's cruelty knows no boundaries. That is just disgusting, but I am afraid such things happen here in the USA just as bad. I could not bring myself to do such a thing to a living beast of any kind, but some do not have any feeling whatsoever. Mankind has really not traveled too far from the trees.

[Siebenstein]

04:28 AM on 03/27/2012

These sick samples who think they belong to the human species are creeping all over the planet; here and everwhere.

Makes me want to die so I don't have to experience something like this.

[saami]

07:16 PM on 02/08/2012

SICK!

[loanshark]

07:11 PM on 02/08/2012

That is as sick as the Chinese practice of boiling a live dog to death because it enhances the flavor.

[Bernique]

07:10 PM on 02/08/2012

Why is this horror on HuffPo? Does it now publish ANYTHING, NO MATTER HOW VILE?

[naaman]

07:34 PM on 02/08/2012

Didn't/couldn't watch video. Am disappointed in Huff Post! - Porn next?

[Fred303]

11:46 PM on 02/08/2012

Get a grip , The title said Graphic.

[Sam141979]

05:50 PM on 02/08/2012

MMMMMM, Bacon!

[Siebenstein]

04:28 AM on 03/27/2012

Here is one of these sick species samples.