The story of an encounter#
In 1898, the German Empire obtained from the Qing dynasty a ninety-nine-year lease on Jiaozhou Bay, at the southern tip of the Shandong peninsula. Soldiers, engineers, missionaries and settlers made their homes around the port of Qingdao. According to the CKU standard, they arrived with their working dogs: German Shepherds, Rottweilers and Great Danes.
These European dogs are said to have found a land that already had dogs of its own. The villages of Shandong were home to hardy farm dogs and a fine and fast hunting sighthound, the Shandong sighthound. Over the years, the standard says, crosses became more and more common, sometimes by chance and sometimes by design. Farmers are said to have found in them a valuable balance: the mass, strength and guarding instinct of the German molossers, combined with the stamina, speed and resilience of the local dogs. This story is repeated everywhere, often word for word, but the pages that tell it all copy the CKU standard, and no document from the period confirms it.
Zhuqiao, the cradle of the breed#
The type we recognise today took shape much later, in the 1970s, around the town of Zhuqiao, part of the city of Laizhou on the northern coast of the peninsula. Chinese sources tell the story of a big black dog weighing around sixty-five kilos, with erect ears and a square muzzle, nicknamed "Da Lao Hei", the big old black one. Every Laizhou Hong is said to descend from him. The tale is probably as much local legend as genealogy, but it captures what matters most: the breed is the patient work of village breeders who, for decades, selected the dogs that best guarded their yards and their livestock. The oldest dated written records are Chinese articles from 1994, which already describe it as a "famous dog".
They named it after its town and its colour. Laizhou for the place. Hong, 红, for red: that deep, almost coppery red that marks the cheeks, muzzle, chest and legs against a black coat. Old descriptions waver between a long, fine muzzle and a square, massive one.
The golden age and the false "Soviet Red"#
In the 1980s and 1990s, the Laizhou Hong became a star. It could be found on farms and in warehouses, in the homes of local dignitaries who wanted a prestige dog and, according to Chinese encyclopaedias, with some local police forces. Dealers came from all over the country to Zhuqiao, which in the early 1990s was reputed to be the largest dog market in China, and a good male could reportedly sell for more than ten thousand yuan, a small fortune at the time.
This was when a stubborn misunderstanding was born. To charge more, some dealers renamed the breed "Sulian Hong", the Soviet Red, as if the dog had come from abroad. Yet it has no connection whatsoever with the USSR. The nickname caught on in everyday speech and ended up describing any black dog with a red belly and upright ears. Even today, many websites present the "Soviet Red" as a separate breed. It is the same dog, even though the nickname was also used to sell other black and tan dogs.
The decline#
The craze faded as quickly as it had arrived. From the 1990s onwards, the German Shepherd, and then every fashionable Western breed, flooded the Chinese market. The Laizhou Hong was now just a "local dog". Uncontrolled crossbreeding spread and produced smaller, thinner dogs with yellowish markings and drooping ears. As early as the mid-1990s, farming magazines were also presenting it as a meat dog that fattened quickly. Chinese sources report that some dogs ended up being sold by weight. With no breeders' association and no national standard, purebred dogs became so scarce that the breed came close to disappearing.
The revival#
The turnaround came from Chinese enthusiasts. Later, Chinese canine specialists proposed a single name, "mountain red dog". In 2017, the China Kennel Union registered the breed and held its first shows for it. In December, in Weifang, in its home province of Shandong, it held the first specialty show devoted to the Laizhou Hong. Its official standard, under the name Laizhou Hong, describes an athletic molossoid, black with clean tan markings, calm and devoted to its family. That same year, according to British breeders, the first dogs left China for the United Kingdom.
In 2019, the breed was shown at the World Dog Show in Shanghai, among the breeds that the Fédération Cynologique Internationale (FCI) does not yet recognise. It then reached the United States, Serbia, Australia and Brazil. A few years later, according to her kennel, an American female earned the breed's first IGP working titles, proof that its working instinct had survived a turbulent history.
A paradox: in the years following its recognition by the CKU, several Chinese cities, including Qingdao, put it on their lists of "fierce" dogs banned in urban areas (see The Laizhou Hong and the law in China).
Today in France#
The Laizhou Hong arrived in France in the 2020s. A handful of kennels have taken it up. It remains very rare, and it is recognised neither by the FCI nor by the Société Centrale Canine (French Kennel Club), which means it cannot be registered in the LOF (French stud book). Its future outside China depends on a small number of founding dogs, which is why health testing and transparent breeding matter so much.
Born, according to the most widespread story, of the meeting between German dogs and the dogs of Shandong, shaped by village breeders, praised to the skies and then almost forgotten, the red dog of Laizhou is only just beginning its story beyond China.