Pow!

POW! 37

A nightlong torrential downpour has washed away the vomit of the poison victims. The street looks newly scrubbed and the leaves on the trees oily green. Thanks to the rain, a hole in the temple roof is now as big as a millstone, and through it sunlight pours in. Dozens of rats, flushed out by the water, crouch atop the crumbling remains of clay idols. The woman from last night, the spitting image of Aunty Wild Mule, hasn't shown up and, since I'm hungry, I go ahead and eat the mushrooms growing round the Wise Monk's straw mat. That energizes me, puts a sparkle in my eyes and clears my head. Scenes from my past float up from the recesses of my brain: at a gravesite backed against the mountains and facing the sea—the ideal feng shui—a woman in black sits in front of a marble tombstone. The headstone likeness shows that it is the grave of Lan Daguan's son, and the mole near the woman's mouth tells me that she is the Buddhist nun Shen Yaoyao. There are no tears on her face and no signs of mourning. A subtle fragrance emanates from the bouquet of calla lilies in front of the headstone. A woman walks up lightly behind Lan Daguan, whose eyes are shut and who seems deep in thought. ‘Mr Lan,’ she says softly, ‘Master Huiming passed away last night.’ Lan sighs as if shedding a great burden. ‘Now,’ he says to himself, ‘I am truly worry-free’. He gulps down a glassful of liquor and then says: ‘Have Xiao Qin send for a couple of women.’ ‘Mr—’ the woman exclaims. ‘Mr what? I'm going to commemorate his passing with frenzied, unbridled sex!’ As he cavorts with wild abandon with two long-legged, slope-shouldered women, the four craftsmen who had built the idol stagger into the yard in front of the Wutong Temple and cry out in alarm when they see the marred face of the rain-ravaged Meat God. The master craftsman rebukes the three younger men for not covering its face with plastic or dressing it in rain cloak and bamboo hat. They hang their heads and accept the tongue-lashing without a word of protest. The two long-legged women kneel on the carpet and plead coquettishly: ‘Be good to us, Patron. Our breasts are Yaoyao's breasts, our legs are Yaoyao's legs, we are Yaoyao's stand-ins, so treat us with tenderness.’ ‘Do you know who Yaoyao was?’ Lan asks unemotionally. ‘No,’ they reply. ‘All we know is that we can please Patron by pretending to be her. And when Patron is happy, he treats us fondly.’ Lan Daguan reacts with a belly laugh as tears spill from his eyes. Two of the young craftsmen walk up with buckets of clean water while the third has discovered a wire brush. With the foreman in charge, they scrub the paint off the idol. It howls a complaint, and my skin turns itchy and painful. Once the paint has been cleaned off, I see the original colour and grain of the willow tree. ‘We'll paint it again after it dries’ the foreman tells them. ‘Xiaobao, go see Director Yan for the funds. Tell him we'll take the Meat God back and chop it up for kindling if he doesn't come up with the money’ ‘Be careful you don't wind up with a toothache’ warns Shifu, the worker who suffered the night before. ‘The Meat God knows what I'm doing, the foreman says unemotionally. The young man takes off running, hips churning. The foreman walks into the temple to inspect the crumbling Wutong Spirit. His bookish apprentice follows him in as the foreman pats the Horse Spirit on the rump—a piece of clay falls off. ‘This is our meal ticket’ he says. ‘These five spirits will keep us busy for quite some time.’ ‘What worries me, Shifu,’ his disciple says, ‘is that things will change.’ ‘Change how?’ the foreman asks with a glare. ‘After what happened last night, Shifu, with more than a hundred poisoned, what are the chances that the Carnivore Festival will continue? If they cancel the festival, there'll be no Meat God Temple and they won't want to refurbish this Wutong Temple. Didn't you hear the lieutenant governor last night when he talked about the Meat God and the Wutong Temples in the same breath?’ ‘You've got a point, the foreman says, ‘but, young fellow, there are things in this world you don't understand. If nothing had happened last night, the festival might well have been cancelled next year. But, because it did, there's no chance it won't be held next year. And bigger than ever.’ The apprentice can only shake his head. ‘You're right, I don't understand’ ‘That won't kill you, boy,’ the foreman says. ‘There are things you young people don't need to understand. Just keep doing your job and you'll understand when you reach a certain age.’ ‘That I understand, Shifu,’ the youngster answers. With his chin the foreman points to the two men out in the yard with the Meat God. ‘Those two are fine with manual labour, but I'm going to count on you for what needs to be done with the Wutong Spirit.’ ‘I'll do my best, Shifu, but what if my best isn't good enough and I don't live up to your expectations?’ ‘Don't sell yourself short. I'm an excellent judge of people. Four of the five spirits are pretty much ruined, and it's not going to be easy putting them back the way they were. But I've got an old edition of Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, which describes what the five spirits are supposed to look like, though we'll have to make some improvements to keep up with the times. We can't just imitate the old style. Take this Horse Spirit. It looks more equine than human, the foreman says as his hands move around the idol. We need to make it look more human so it won't scare all the women away. But won't other teams also want the job, Shifu? the concerned young worker asks. Only Nie Liu and Lao Han's gangs, and they're lucky if they can throw together a local earth god. These five spirits are way above their ability.’ ‘Don't underestimate them, Shifu,’ the youngster says. ‘I hear that Nie Liu sent his son to a fine-arts school to study sculpting. When he comes back to take over from his father, we won't be in his league.’ ‘Are you talking about his blockhead son? A fine-arts school, you say? He'd be no good even if he'd gone to an art academy. The first requirement for working on religious idols is to have the spirit in you. Without it, no matter how talented you are, you'll never create anything but lumps of clay. But you're right, we must be careful and alert. The world is full of talented people, and who's to say that a master sculptor won't show up some day? Keep that in mind.’ ‘Thanks, Shifu,’ the youngster says. ‘Now,’ the foreman says, ‘find a way to strike up a friendship with Lao Lan, the Slaughterhouse Village head, since it was his ancestors who built the Wutong Temple. He'll put up most of the money for the refurbishment, especially since word has it that he's recently received something like ten million from overseas. Whoever he wants to repair the idols has the best chance of getting the job.’ ‘Don't you worry, Shifu,’ the youngster says confidently. ‘My sister-in-law is the cousin of his wife, Fan Zhaoxia. I checked—people say that Lao Lan does what his wife tells him.’ The foreman nods appreciatively. Lan Daguan flings his glass to the floor and gets up unsteadily. The two servants rush up and catch him under his arms. ‘You've had too much to drink, sir,’ one of them says. ‘Me? Too much to drink? Maybe. You—‘he shrugs his arms to free them from the women's grip and glares at them, ‘go get two women to come sober me up.’ Shall I keep talking, Wise Monk?

Three months before Lao Lan's wife died, he and I dealt with two clandestine visits by reporters and were each proud to have managed so successfully.

The first came disguised as a peasant sheep-seller. With a scrawny old sheep in tow, he mixed in with the crowd of people who had brought animals to sell—cows and sheep on the hoof, pigs in handcarts, dogs on shoulder poles. Why shoulder poles? Try putting a halter on the dogs! The sellers dull the animals’ senses with liquor-laced buns, tie their rear legs together, slip their poles under the ropes and then hoist them onto their shoulders. Since it was market day, the sellers formed a large crowd. Once I'd planned the day's production schedule, I took a walk round the plant with Jiaojiao.

Our prestige soared in the wake of the contest. Nearly all of the workers we encountered looked at us with respect. As for my defeated combatants, Liu Shengli and Wan Xiaojiang, they nodded and bowed and greeted me as Young Master. Despite their sarcasm, their admiration was genuine. Though Feng Tiehan maintained the restraint he'd displayed during the competition, there was no hiding his admiration either. Father observed everything and then took me aside for a heart-to-heart talk, urging me to act humbly and to avoid any signs of arrogance: ‘People shun fame, pigs fear bulk,’ he said. ‘A dead pig doesn't fear boiling water,’ I countered with a giggle. ‘Xiaotong, my son,’ Father sighed, ‘you're too young to take my words seriously. It's in one ear and out the other. You won't know how hard a brick wall is till you smash your nose against it.’ ‘Dieh,’ I said, ‘I know how hard a brick wall is. Not only that, I know that a pickaxe is even harder.’ ‘You must do as you see fit, son,’ he said resignedly. ‘This isn't how I wanted my children to turn out, but there's nothing I can do about that now. I've not been a good father, so I guess I'm to blame for how you've turned out.’ ‘Dieh,’ I said, ‘I know what you wanted of us. You wanted us to go to school, to go to college. Then abroad, to complete our education. But Jiaojiao and I aren't student material, Dieh, any more than you're official material. But we have our unique talents, so why should we follow in everyone else's footsteps on the path to success? As they say, if you have something fresh to offer, you'll never go hungry. We can do things the way we want.’ Father hung his head. ‘What unique talents do any of us have?’ he wondered aloud, dispirited. ‘Dieh,’ I said, ‘other people can look down on us, but we can't look down on ourselves. Of course we have unique talents. Yours is evaluating livestock, ours is eating meat.’ He sighed again: ‘Son, how can you call that a unique talent?’ ‘Dieh,’ I replied, ‘as you very well know, it's not everyone who can consume five pounds of meat at one sitting without adverse effects. And it takes a unique talent to determine the gross weight of a cow just by looking at it. Don't you call those unique talents? If you don't, then the whole concept of unique talent is meaningless.’ He shook his head: ‘Son, the way I see it, your unique talent isn't eating meat, but twisting false logic until it seems true. You should be somewhere where you can show off your eloquence, somewhere like the United Nations. That's where you belong, a place where you can debate to your heart's content.’ ‘Would you look closely at that place where you think I belong, Dieh? The UN? What would I do in a place like that? Despite their Western suits and leather shoes, those people are all phonies. The one thing I can't stand is to be tied down. I need to be free. But even worse, there'd be no meat for me there and I won't go anywhere where there's no meat, not even Heaven.’ ‘I'm not going to argue with you,’ Father said, exasperated. ‘It's the same thing all over. Since you say you're no longer a child, then you have to answer to yourself for whatever happens. Don't come crying to me in the future if things don't work out.’ ‘Take it easy, Dieh,’ I said. ‘Future? What does that mean? Why waste time thinking about the future? There's a saying: “When the cart reaches the mountain, there'll be a road, and a boat can sail even upwind.” And another one that goes: “Favoured people are free of hustle and bustle, others blindly rush about.” Lao Lan says that Jiaojiao and I were sent down to earth to eat meat and that we'll go back after we've consumed our allotted amount. The future? Not for us, thank you!’ I could see he didn't know whether to laugh or cry, which delighted me. I now knew that I had put Father behind me as a result of the meat-eating contest. A man I'd once revered was no longer worthy of that feeling. Nor, for that matter, was Lao Lan. I was struck by the realization that while they seem complicated, the affairs of the world are in fact quite simple. There's only one issue that deserves worldwide attention—meat. The world's vast population can be divided into meat categories. In simplest terms, those who eat meat and those who don't, and those who are true meat-eaters and those who aren't. Then there are those who would eat meat if they had access to it and those who have access but don't eat it. Finally, there are those who thrive by eating meat and those who suffer over it. Amid those vast numbers of people, I am among the very few who desire meat, who have a capacity for meat and love it, who have constant access to meat and who thrive by eating it. That is the primary source of my abundant self-confidence. See how long-winded I get, Wise Monk, when the talk turns to meat? People find that annoying, I know, so I'll change the subject and talk about the reporter who dressed up like a peasant.

He was wearing a tattered blue jacket over grey cotton trousers. He had yellow rubber sandals on his feet and a bulging old khaki bag over his shoulder as he joined the crowd with his scrawny, tethered sheep. His jacket was too big for him and his trousers too long, which made him look sort of lost in his clothes. His hair was a mess, his face ghostly pale and his eyes constantly darted here and there. He didn't fool me for a minute, but I didn't take him for a reporter, at least not at first. When Jiaojiao and I approached him, he looked away. Something in his eyes bothered me, so I scrutinized him more closely. Refusing to look me in the eye, he covered up his discomfort by whistling, which made me even more suspicious. But I still didn't think he was a reporter in disguise. I thought he might be a delinquent from town who'd stolen a sheep and brought it here to sell. I nearly went up to tell him he didn't have to worry, since we never asked where our animals came from. None of the cows the West County peddlers brought came with a pedigree. I took a look at his sheep—a castrated old ram with curled horns. It had been recently sheared, but not professionally, evident from the unevenly scissored patches and a few spots where the skin had been nicked. A sad, scrawny old ram with a terrible haircut that might have been remotely presentable had it been favoured with a full coat. Attracted by the short fleece, Jiaojiao reached out to touch the animal and startled it into a leap. The unexpected movement caused the fellow to stumble and jerked the lead out of his hand, freeing the animal to meander up to the queue of sellers and their animals, the rope dragging on the ground behind it. The fellow ran after it, taking big strides and swinging his arms wildly as he tried to step on the moving rope, but missed every time. It almost looked as if he was putting on an act for the crowd. Every time he bent over to grab the rope, it slipped out of range. By now, his clumsy, comical performance had everyone in stitches. Including me.

‘Elder Brother,’ Jiaojiao said with a laugh, ‘who is that man?’

‘A fool, but a funny one,’ I said.

‘You think he's a fool?’ said an old fellow with four dogs on his pole. He seemed to know us, but we didn't know him. His jacket draped over his shoulders, his arms crossed, he held a pipe between his teeth. ‘He's no fool,’ he said as he launched a mouthful of phlegm. ‘Look at those shifty eyes, how they take in everything. He's not an honest man,’ he continued under his breath, ‘not with those eyes.’

I knew what he was getting at. ‘We know,’ I said softly, ‘he's a thief.’

‘So call the police.’

I called the old fellow's attention to the queue of animals and their sellers. ‘We've got plenty on our hands already, Uncle.’

‘Thunder always rumbles after a temple festival. There are thieves everywhere you look these days,’ he said. ‘I was going to feed these four dogs another month before taking them out of their pens, but I couldn't take the chance. The thieves toss knockout drugs into dog pens—ones that are effective for days—then steal the dogs and sell them outside the area.’

‘What can you tell me about those drugs?’ I asked, trying to sound nonchalant. Now that the days were turning cold, men in the city were looking for tonics to increase their vitality, which meant that dog meat pots were getting fired up. We supplied the city with dog meat, and had to attend to the issue of canine water-cleansing. The animals could inflict serious damage if they were spooked, and a knockout drug could solve that problem. Once the dogs were doped, we could hang them up and start the treatment. That done, it wouldn't matter if they came to, since they'd be more like pigs than dogs and no longer a threat. All that remained then was to drag them over to the killing room, not dead but barely alive.

‘I'm told it's a red powder bomb that makes a muffled noise when it hits the ground and releases a pink mist and a strange smell somewhere between fragrant and noxious. Even an attack dog will keel over after one whiff.’ In a tone that was equal parts anger and dread, he added, ‘Those thieves are no different than women who drug and kidnap children. They all belong to secret societies, and ordinary peasants have no way of laying hands on their formulas. It's probably some strange concoction we could never track down.’

My eyes travelled down to the old fellow's bleary-eyed dogs. ‘Did you get that bunch drunk?’

‘Two jin of liquor and four steamed buns,’ he replied. ‘Liquor these days has lost its punch.’

Jiaojiao was squatting in front of the dogs, prodding their oily lips with a reed stem, occasionally revealing a white fang. Their breath reeked of alcohol. From time to time one would roll its eyes and make dreamy sounds.

A man pushed a scale on squeaky wheels over to the dog pens from the warehouse, the hook swaying back and forth. For the sake of convenience, we'd built a pen exclusively for dogs near the one that held sheep and pigs. What made that necessary was an incident involving a worker who'd entered the pen holding all the animals together to pick out one of the pigs, and had been badly bitten by dogs turned half mad from being penned up too long. He was still in the hospital receiving daily shots of anti-rabies vaccine—vaccine that had already expired, according to someone from the hospital who spoke in confidence. Whether or not he'd begin to show symptoms was an open question. Naturally, the fact that a worker had been bitten wasn't the only reason we'd invested in the construction of a separate dog pen. Another was that dogs that had been plied with liquor were capable of wreaking havoc once they sobered up, attacking the sheep and pig penmates. Peace was rare in the pen, day or night. One day, after planning the production schedule, I took Jiaojiao over to see what was going on in the pen. Nothing, as it turned out, one of those rare peaceful moments. We saw dozens of dogs, some standing, others sprawled on the ground, forcibly occupying most of the space in the pen and forcing the pigs to huddle in one corner—some white, some black, some spotted—and sheep—along with a few billy goats and a couple of milch goats—in another. There was hardly any space between the pigs, who faced the railing, thus leaving their rumps vulnerable. The sheep too were clustered together, with some long-horned billy goats standing protectively. Almost none of the animals were injury-free, thanks, of course, to the dogs. Despite the peaceful moment—a rest for the dogs—the pigs and the sheep were preparing for the worst. Even when the dogs were relaxed, internal flare-ups were inevitable, including semi-serious fights between the males and the occasional cluster-fuck. At those times the pigs and sheep were so quiet that they hardly seemed to exist. But then a sort of gang fight broke out among several dozen dogs, which sent fur flying and blood spraying and resulted in some serious injuries, including a few broken legs. This was no longer a game. Jiaojiao and I wondered what the pigs and sheep must have been thinking as battles raged among the dogs. She said they weren't thinking about anything, that they were taking advantage of the dogfights to catch up on lost sleep. I would have challenged her on that, but I looked into the pen and, just as she'd said, the animals were sprawled on the ground, their eyes shut as they dozed. But dogfights were a rarity. Most of the time, the dogs, sporting sinister grins, launched attacks on the sheep and pigs. At first, the larger boars and billy goats bravely fought them off. The goats reared up on their hind legs, heads high, and charged, but the dogs nimbly sidestepped the attacks. ‘I thought you said that meat dogs are stupid animals,’ some might ask. ‘Then how could they be as alert as wolves in a forest?’ Yes, they entered the pens as stupid animals but, after being starved for a week, their wild nature returned accompanied by a surge in intelligence. They reverted to being predators, and, not surprisingly, the sheep and pigs penned up with them became their prey. After the first assault failed, the billy goats prepared for a second, rearing up as before, raising their heads and aiming their horns at the prowling dogs. But their movements were stiff, their tactics predictable and once again they were easily sidestepped by the dogs. They then steeled themselves for a third attempt, but it was a weak one, so weak that the dogs barely had to move to get out of the way. By now, all the fight had left the goats. The dogs, grinning hideously, charged their ovine prey and sank their fangs into sheep tails, sheep ears and sheep throats. The victims bleated piteously while a few somewhat more fortunate ones stampeded like headless flies. Many of them rammed their heads into the pen railings and crumpled to the ground, unconscious. The dogs made short work of the dead sheep, eating everything but the feet—unappetizing—the horns and any skin with too much fleece attached. The pigs quaked as they watched the sheep being slaughtered, for they knew they were next. Some of the larger boars tried to ward off the attack by emitting low grunts and charging like black bombs. The dogs leapt out of the way and set their sights on the pigs’ rumps or ears, which they bit savagely. With yelps of pain, the boars tried to turn the tables but were immediately set upon by other opportunistic dogs that knocked them to the ground. Their screeches filled the air, but only for a few moments. Blood soaked the ground as their bellies were ripped open and their intestines torn out and dragged round the pen.

Anyone could see why the animals had to be separated, even if a dog had not bitten our worker. We'd have lost much high-quality lamb and pork, and would have raised savage dogs that we'd then have had to poison or shoot. Viewed from the perspective of entertainment, I'd have preferred not to separate them. But I was not your typical youngster—no, I was the head of one of the plant's workshops, laden with heavy responsibilities, and the last thing I wanted to do was cause financial setbacks just so I could be entertained by scenes of carnage. So we packed thirty pounds of beef with two hundred sleeping pills, and, once the killer dogs were under, dragged them over to a pen built exclusively for them. They woke up groggy after three days and their eyes glazed over as they took in their new surroundings. They then circled the outer limits of the pen, howling their displeasure. An animal's temperament and demeanour are ruled by its stomach. Before being brought to us, these dogs had been raised on a prescribed feed. Now they had to subsist on leftovers from the killing rooms and the blood of cows and sheep, reason enough for even the dumbest and tamest among them to revert to their wolfish ways only days after entering the dog pen. Part of the logic behind our decision was related to the disposal of the offal on the killing rooms floors. But we also wanted to improve the quality of the meat, and knew that these dogs would produce better meat than those animals that had been raised on a meatless diet. Winter was on its way, Lao Lan said, the season when the consumption of dog meat spikes, and it was up to us to supply a product that enhanced consumers’ vitality. Added to that was a plan to present meat from these dogs as gifts to expand the plant's customer base. On many starlit nights, my sister and I watched as some of these dogs crouched alongside the pen railings, looked up at the stars in the sky and howled, a chilling wolfish cry. A single animal baying at the moon would have had little effect on us. But joined by dozens of fellow creatures, the din turned the plant into a hell on earth. One such night, Jiaojiao and I bravely stole up to the pen to peer through the gaps in the railing. The dogs’ green eyes flashed like a panorama of bright little lanterns. Some of them howled into the night sky, others lifted their legs to urinate against the railing, still others ran and leapt, their hardened bodies leaving visible streaks in the air and their moonlit fur gleaming like fine silks and satins. This was no collection of dogs, but a wolf pack, plain and simple. That got me thinking that there must be a huge difference between carnivores and herbivores—one look at those dogs told us that. As tame as sheep and as stupid as pigs when they were on a prescribed diet, but as fierce as wolves once they began eating meat. Jiaojiao seemed to read my mind. ‘Did you and I come from wolves?’ she whispered. ‘I made a face and said, ‘Yes, that's exactly what we came from. You and I are wolf children.’

The dogs were not running and leaping for the sake of exercise—they were intent on leaping over the railing to freedom. Eating fresh meat and drinking warm blood had made them smart enough to realize what was in store for them. The onset of winter meant that they would be taken into the water-treatment building, where an infusion of water would bloat them out of shape, disrupt their ability to walk and make their eyes sink. Then it would be off to the kill rooms, where they'd be bludgeoned, skinned alive, disembowelled and packaged to be sent into town as a tonic for men who longed for hard-as-steel erections. Not the sort of future any self-respecting dog looked forward to. As I watched the dogs executing extraordinary leaps, I was thankful that we had built the fences tall enough. Constructed of iron posts, they were five metres high and, thanks to the thick steel wire, virtually indestructible. Lao Lan and I had been opposed to the use of iron posts at first, but my father had insisted upon it and we went along with him. He was, after all, the plant manager. And he was right. Back when he was living in the northeast, he'd developed an understanding of the link between dogs and wolves. Now, as I thought back, I cringed at the thought of what would have happened if those now wolfish animals had made it out of the pen. The entire area could have wound up under siege.

The man wheeled the scale over to the dog pen, where my father appeared, seemingly out of nowhere.

‘Hey, dog-peddlers,’ he shouted to the men waiting in the queue. ‘Line up over there.’

The old fellow squatted down, picked up his shoulder pole and straightened up, lifting the four dogs off the ground. Oh, there's one thing I forgot. People who raised dogs believed in marking their animals, including clipping their ears and inserting nose rings. This old fellow, shunning such half-baked strategies, actually removed his dogs’ tails; it gave them a dopey look but increased their agility. I wondered if his tailless dogs would turn wolfish in the pen and, if so, if they too would leap about in the moonlight. Let's say they would. Then would they be more graceful than the others or would they bounce about like billy goats? We fell in behind him, feeling sorry for the dogs yet knowing what hypocrites that made us. Showing sympathy to a dog was asking to be eaten by it. And what a waste, albeit insignificant, that would be. In ancient times, human flesh had probably—no, definitely—been a delicacy for beasts of prey, but in present times a human being eaten by beasts of prey would be turning the world upside down, confusing the roles of eater and eaten. Their purpose in life was to be eaten by humans, which makes sympathy for them both hypocritical and laughable. And yet, I couldn't help feeling sorry for those pitiful creatures hanging from the man's shoulders—or perhaps I should say that I found the sight hard to endure. Wanting to clear my head of these weak, shameful thoughts, I took Jiaojiao by the hand and headed towards the meat-cleansing workshop, where we watched as the dog-peddlers laid their animals, one on top of the other, onto the scale. The only signs of life were their low moans, a bit like an old woman with a toothache; it was hard to imagine them as living creatures. The scale operator skilfully moved the slide across the arm and announced the weight in a low voice. Father, who was standing to the side, said unemotionally: ‘Deduct twenty pounds!’

‘Why?’ the seller protested loudly. ‘Why are you deducting twenty pounds?’

‘Because you stuffed each of them with at least five pounds of food before you left home,’ Father said coolly. ‘I'm deducting only twenty to save you a bit of dignity.’

‘No one can put anything over on you, Manager Luo,’ the man confessed with a wry smile. ‘But these animals are here to be slaughtered and we had to let them eat, didn't we? I raised them myself. They're like family. Besides, don't you fill them full of water before you kill them?’

‘You'd better be ready to prove that,’ Father said with a steely look.

‘Seriously, Lao Luo,’ the dog-seller sneered, ‘if you don't want people to know something, don't do it in the first place. Everyone knows about your meat-cleansing technique. Who do you think you're fooling?’ The man glanced at me out of the corner of his eye and, in a voice dripping with sarcasm, said, ‘Am I right or am I not? You're the head of the meat-cleansing workshop, aren't you?’

‘We don't infuse our animals with water,’ I responded. ‘We cleanse the meat. Is that something you can understand?’

‘Cleanse the meat?’ the man sputtered. ‘You fill those animals almost to the bursting point. Cleansing the meat! Well, I have to give you credit for coming up with such a fine term.’

‘I'm not going to argue with you,’ said Father angrily. ‘Sell your dogs for twenty pounds less or take them back home with you.’

‘Lao Luo,’ the man said, squinting, ‘you're a different man now that things are going your way. I guess you've forgotten the time you went round picking cigarette butts up off the ground.’

‘That's enough,’ Father said.

‘All right,’ the man conceded, ‘you win. You can tell when a man's luck is up by the state of his horse, and a bird of prey is always round when a rabbit's luck runs out.’ He reached down and arranged his dogs on the scale and then, with a forced smile, he said, ‘Not wearing your green cuckold's hat today?’

Father turned red all the way to his ears. Words failed him.

I was about to shred the man with my razor-sharp wit when I heard shouts coming from the ‘meat-cleansing’ station. When I turned to look, I saw the so-called goat-seller racing down the path to the main gate, followed by a posse of plant workers. He kept shooting them glances over his shoulder and they kept shouting: ‘Grab him—don't let him get away!’

Something clicked in my head, and I blurted ‘Reporter!’

When I looked at Father, I saw he'd turned ashen white. I grabbed Jiaojiao's hand and took off running to the gate. I was excited, pumped up, as if I'd spotted a dog running down a jackrabbit on a humdrum winter day. Jiaojiao was slowing me down, so I let go of her and ran as if my life depended on it. The wind whooshed past my ears. There were chaotic shouts behind me—barking dogs, bleating sheep, grunting pigs, lowing cows. The man stumbled on a rock and thudded to the ground, his momentum carrying him a good three feet on his belly. His bulging canvas bag flew off and an inhuman ‘oof!’ burst from his mouth, like a toad getting squashed. He'd taken such a fall that I couldn't help but feel sorry for him. We'd built the path with a mixture of old bricks, gravel and cinders, all unforgivingly hard. At the very least, he had to have a bloody nose and cut lips, maybe even a lost tooth or two. Broken bones weren't out of the question. But he scrambled to his feet, staggered over to his canvas bag and picked it up. Ready for another run, he froze when he saw—as did I—Lao Lan and my mother, two formidable opponents, standing like sentries and blocking his way. By then his pursuers had caught up with him.

Lao Lan and Mother were in front of him, Father and I were behind him and the plant workers all round him. With a wave of his hand, Lao Lan dismissed the workers. The hapless fellow turned round and round, looking for a way out of our human cage. I think he assumed that I was the weak link in the chain but then he noticed Jiaojiao and the knife she clutched in her hand. His next avenue of escape was past my mother but her expression changed his mind. Her face was red, her gaze unfocused, the quintessential look of distraction. But it made him lower his head in defeat. Father, on the other hand, suddenly looked the picture of dejection. Turning his back on the reporter and ignoring the queue of animal-sellers, he headed to the northeast corner of the plant, to a rebirth platform made of pine. That had been Mother's idea. She said that a platform was needed to perform regular Buddhist rites in order to help the sad ghosts of all those creatures that had served mankind move ahead on the wheel of life after we killed them. I didn't think that Lao Lan, a lifelong butcher, believed in ghosts and spirits, and so I was surprised when he accepted Mother's idea. We'd already performed rites on the platform—we'd invited a senior Buddhist monk to recite sutras while several lesser monks burnt incense and spirit paper and set off firecrackers at the base of the platform. The senior monk was a ruddy-faced man with a booming voice and high moral airs. Listening to him chant the sutras was a deeply spiritual experience. Mother compared him to the Tang monk in the Travels to the West TV series. When Lao Lan jokingly asked if she wanted to feast on the Tang monk's flesh to achieve immortality, she kicked him in the calf. ‘What do you think I am, some kind of demon?’ she'd grumbled.

My father was a regular visitor to the platform, which stood ten metres tall and gave off a pleasant pine smell; he sometimes stayed up there for hours, not coming down even at mealtimes. ‘Dieh,’ I once asked, ‘what do you do up there?’ ‘Nothing,’ he said woodenly. ‘I know,’ Jiaoajiao said. He rubbed her head, looked glum and said nothing. She and I climbed up there a few times to look round and breathe in the scent of pinewood. We saw distant villages, the river, a misty line of riverbank scrub brush, uncultivated land and all sorts of vapours snaking skyward on the horizon. The vista emptied us of our emotions. ‘I know what he does up there,’ she said. ‘What?’ I asked. Sighing like an exasperated crone, she explained: ‘He thinks about the forests up north.’ As I looked into her moist eyes, I could tell there was more she wanted to say. I'd heard Father and Mother argue over this very thing. ‘I'm like a carpenter wearing a cangue she made,’ Mother said. Father replied, ‘Don't use your narrow-minded view to judge a broad-minded person,’ replied Father. ‘I'm going to ask Lao Lan to take that down tomorrow,’ Mother declared. Father pointed his finger at her: ‘Don't talk to me about him!’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘Why not?’ she responded, just as angrily. ‘What's he ever done to you?’ ‘Plenty,’ Father said. ‘Let's hear it, all of it.’ ‘Are you saying you don't know what I'm talking about?’ Mother's face reddened and venom seemed to shoot from her eyes. ‘Dry filth doesn't stick to a person,’ she said. ‘You can't have waves without wind,’ he said. ‘I've done nothing to be ashamed of,’ she said. ‘He's better off than me,’ he said. ‘His family's always been better off than ours. If you'd rather be with him, I won't stand in your way, but you'll have to settle with me first.’ He turned and stalked off. Mother flung her bowl to the floor and smashed it. ‘Luo Tong,’ she snarled at his back, ‘the next time you browbeat me like that I'll do what you think I already did!’

I'll stop here, Wise Monk. Talking about that upsets me. I'll wrap up my story about the reporter instead.

Father climbed the platform to smoke; Mother went back to her office. Lao Lan, Jiaojiao and I escorted the reporter to my room, a walled-off corner of the meat-cleansing workshop. I could see activity on the work floor through gaps in the plywood walls. After describing our water treatment process, we offered to cleanse his insides, if he was willing, and then deliver him to one of the kill rooms, mix his flesh with camel and dog meat and sell it in town. Bean-sized drops of sweat broke out on his forehead and we saw that his pants were wet. ‘Whoever heard of a grown man peeing in his pants?’ Jiaojiao remarked. ‘Disgusting!’ If, on the other hand, he was unwilling to be cleansed and slaughtered, we'd be happy to hire him as head of our PR department, pay him a salary of a thousand yuan a month and a two-thousand-yuan bonus each time a story about the plant made the papers, no matter the length. Well, he signed on and wrote a long feature about the plant, one that nearly filled a page. True to our word and committed to seeing things through to the end, we gave him two thousand yuan, treated him to a lavish meal and saw him off with a hundred pounds of dog meat.

The next reporters—two of them—at the plant worked for a TV station. Pan Sun and his assistant came disguised as meat-sellers. Equipped with a hidden camera, they toured the facilities. We offered them the same hospitality and then invited them to serve as consultants too.

All the while Lao Lan and I were dealing with the reporter, Father was on his platform smoking. Every fifteen or twenty minutes, another cigarette butt sailed to the ground. He was in the depths of depression. Dieh, you poor man.