Pow!

  All of a sudden I felt very afraid. Was there something wrong with his mind? I was suddenly afraid that he'd throw himself onto the pyre and join that meat in its martyrdom. So I grabbed Jiaojiao's hand and ran towards the burning pile as shouts of alarm erupted behind us, followed by uproarious laughter. Instinctively, we turned to see what had happened. Apparently the meat on October's pike had flown off like a leaping flame and landed on top of a parked luxury sedan. The driver shrieked in alarm, he cursed, he jumped, he tried desperately to knock the flaming meat off his car but carefully for fear of being burnt. He knew the car could go up in flames, perhaps even explode. Suddenly he took off one of his shoes and knocked the meat to the ground.

  ‘We are committed to putting in place a system of checks that will enable us to carry out our sacred duty, ensuring that not a single piece of nonstandard meat ever leaves this plant…’ The passionate voice of Lao Han, chief of the Inspection Station, momentarily drowned out the noises on the street.

  Jiaojiao and I reached Father, then we pushed and shoved and pinched him until he reluctantly took his eyes of the pyre and gazed down at us. In a hoarse, raspy voice—as if the flames had seared his larynx—he asked: ‘What are you children doing?’

  ‘Dieh,’ I said, ‘you shouldn't be standing here.’

  ‘Where do you think I should to be standing?’ he asked, a bitter smile on his lips.

  ‘Over there.’ I pointed to the meeting site.

  ‘I'm beginning to get annoyed, children.’

  ‘Please, Dieh,’ I said. ‘Take a page out of Lao Lan's book.’

  ‘Do you really want me to turn into someone like him?’ he asked darkly.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, with a look at Jiaojiao. ‘But better than him.’

  ‘That's a tune I can't sing, children,’ he said. ‘But for your sake, I'll try.’

  Mother ran up breathlessly. ‘What's the matter with you?’ she hissed. ‘You're up next. Lao Lan says to come now.’

  With one last reluctant look at the fire, Father said: ‘All right, I'm coming.’

  ‘And you two, don't get close to that fire,’ Mother warned.

  Father strode purposefully towards the meeting site. Mother walked away from the fire, and we followed her. On the way we spotted the young driver, who had put his shoe back on, kicking the flaming chunk of meat as far as he could. He then ran up to ‘madman’ October and kicked him in the shin. October yelped and staggered but didn't fall.

  ‘What the hell are you up to?’ the driver cursed.

  Terrified by the attack, October gaped at the man for a moment before raising his pike and, with an eerie shout, swinging it at his head. The man ducked, and the pike merely glanced off his cheek. Pale with fright, he managed to grab it before uttering a stream of curses, assuring October that he'd make him pay. Spectators rushed up and held him back. ‘Forget it, comrade,’ they urged. ‘You don't want to get into a dispute with someone who's not right in the head.’

  The driver let go of the pike and stormed off angrily. Then he opened the car's trunk, took out a rag and began to clean the grease off the top of the car.

  October walked off, dragging his pike behind him, limping slightly.

  Suddenly, we heard Father's voice over the loudspeakers: ‘I guarantee that we will not inject our meat with water.’

  The people on the street looked up, trying to locate the source of his voice.

  ‘I guarantee that we will not inject our meat with water,’ he repeated.

  POW! 32

  ‘Movie star Huang Feiyun, a beauty for the ages, was my third uncle's lover.’ Or so Lao Lan told me more than a decade ago. ‘If you could gather up all the newspapers, magazines and posters with her pictures, there'd be enough to fill the hold of a ten-thousand-tonne freighter,’ Lao Lan said on several occasions back then. I tell you, Wise Monk, he wove a riotous romantic history of his third uncle for us. Of course I'm familiar with this Huang Feiyun—her somewhat boyish look hangs before my eyes like a beaded curtain. Though she's retired from public life, and is now the wife of a very rich man, the mother of his children and the hostess of his extravagant villa on Phoenix Mountain, she continues to be an important target of the paparazzi. When she drives her luxury sedan, with its tiny figure of a man as a hood ornament, out of the villa's underground garage, she keeps her foot on the accelerator and races down the winding mountain road. From a distance, it looks like the car is plummeting from the heavens. Her drives down the mountain have been labelled ‘The Descent of the Heavenly Fairy to the Mortal World’ by scandal-mongering tabloid reporters. She steps out of the car, wearing dark glasses and attended by a maidservant who carries her dogs, Napoleon and Vivian Leigh, of a famous breed little known to the average person. She moves quickly through the chandelier-graced hotel lobby, her designer dress reflected off the mirror-like surface of the granite floor (an aspect of the hotel that has been roundly criticized but that attracts a multitude of stars). The concierge knows exactly who she is but dares not make her identity known. He keeps his eyes on the hem of her skirt as she glides across the floor. At the bank of lifts she gestures for her dog-carrying maid to wait in the lobby. Then she steps into a lift, and her progress up to the twenty-eighth floor is observed through the glass in its exterior. She knocks on the door of the Presidential Suite, so luxurious it could cause a public revolt. A young man answers the door and asks who she's looking for. She brushes past him and enters the enormous, flower-festooned living room. Stepping on the rare black peonies strewn across the floor, she heads straight for the oft-visited master bedroom, where there is a bed so frightfully big you could ride a bicycle on it. The bed is vacant but watery sounds emerge from the bathroom. She kicks the door open, and steam billows out accompanied by the sounds of splashing water and feminine giggles. As the steam dissipates, an enormous whirlpool tub comes into view, water gurgling from its sides like a wellspring. Four virginal-looking girls surround Lan Laoda in water covered by flower petals. The star takes a black bottle from her purse and tosses it into the tub. ‘Sulphuric acid,’ she says softly. Then she turns and walks out. The girls shriek and clamber out of the tub, their fair bodies suddenly turned black—but only their bodies; their faces are still white. Lan Laoda, on the other hand, stretches out in the tub, shuts his eyes and says: ‘Dinner tonight, third floor, Huaiyang Chun.’ As she walks out of the bedroom she says: ‘You should invite classier girls.’ ‘They're all younger than you,’ he replies from the bath. We see the star retrace her steps through the living room, spitting on the flowers beneath her feet. The young man who'd opened the door can only stand still and stare. The doorbell rings in loud bursts and then a two-man security detail enters. ‘What's going on here?’ they demand. The star picks up a bunch of black flowers and smacks one of them across the face. He backs away, clutching his cheek. Bells ring out in the corridor.

  One night, soon after the United Meatpacking Plant began operations, Father, Mother, Lao Lan, Jiaojiao and I were sitting round our table, steaming platters of meat glowing beneath the electric lights. There was a bottle and several glasses filled with wine as red as fresh cow's blood. The adults were drinking more than they were eating, unlike my sister and me. Truth be known, the two of us had a respectable capacity for liquor but Mother wouldn't let us drink. At some point, Jiaojiao began to snore; I was quite sleepy myself, which was usual after a big, meaty meal. After putting Jiaojiao to bed, Mother said: ‘You get some sleep too, Xiaotong.’

  ‘No. I want to talk to you about school.’

  ‘Boss Lan,’ Mother said, ‘the boy doesn't want to go to school. He wants to work at the plant.’

  ‘Is that so?’ His eyes narrowed into a smile. ‘Why?’

  Snapping awake, I began to explain: ‘Because the things they teach in school are useless and because I have feelings for meat. I can hear it talk.’

  Surprised at my unexpected response, Lao Lan burst out laughing. ‘You're a true wonder. I'd better not offend you because, who knows, you migh
t really have extraordinary powers. But you still need schooling.’

  ‘I'm not going,’ I said. ‘Forcing me to attend school is a waste of my life. I sneak into the plant through the sewer ditch every day, and I've discovered lots of problems. If you let me work there, I can help you solve them for you.’

  ‘Enough of this nonsense,’ Father said, impatiently. ‘Go to bed. We have things to discuss.’

  I could have carried on, but the look on Father's face stopped me. ‘Xiaotong!’ he roared.

  So I went into the bedroom, grumbling to myself, and sat in a mahogany chair we'd just bought, intent on watching and listening to the adults in the other room.

  Lao Lan swirled the wine in his tall-stemmed glass. ‘Lao Luo, Yuzhen,’ he said unemotionally, ‘what's your view? Will we make or lose money?’

  ‘If the price of meat doesn't rise, then we're bound to lose,’ Mother said, clearly worried. ‘They won't give us a higher price just because we don't inject water into our meat.’

  ‘That's why I want to talk to you,’ Lao Lan said as he sipped his wine. ‘Over the past few days, Huang Biao and I have visited meatpacking plants in several nearby counties, pretending to be meat-sellers. We discovered that they all inject their meat products with water.’

  ‘But we broadcast our assurance in front of those dignitaries,’ Father said softly. ‘That was only a few days ago. Our words are probably still ringing in their ears.’

  ‘My friend, our hands are tied. The way things are these days, even though we're unwilling to inject our meat with water, others aren't. So soon we'll not only lose money but also be out of business.’

  ‘Can't we think of something?’ Father asked.

  ‘Like what? What are our options? There's nothing I want more than to do business the way it ought to be done. If you can figure out a way of staying in business without injecting water, I'm all for it.’

  ‘We can report them to the authorities,’ Father said weakly.

  ‘Is that what you call a good idea? The authorities know exactly what's going on but there's nothing they can do about it,’ he said coldly.

  ‘Crabs go where the currents take them,’ Mother said. ‘If others inject water and we don't, the only thing that proves is how stupid we are.’

  ‘We can try another line of work,’ Father offered. ‘Who says we have to be butchers?’

  ‘That's all we know,’ Lan said with a caustic laugh. ‘It's what we're good at. Your ability to evaluate beef on the hoof, for instance, is part of the butcher system.’

  ‘What good am I anyway?’ Father said. ‘I have no talents.’

  ‘None of us have any talents, except this,’ Lan said. ‘But we've got an edge, and if we inject our meat with water then we'll do a better job of it than the rest.’

  ‘You have to do it, Luo Tong,’ Mother said. ‘We can't operate at a loss.’

  ‘If that's what you both want to, then go ahead,’ Father said. ‘The key is Lao Han at the Inspection Station—will he give us trouble?’

  ‘He wouldn't dare,’ Lao Lan said. ‘He's a dog we feed.’

  ‘When the monkeys attack, the dogs grow fangs,’ Father said.

  ‘You two do what you have to, and I'll take care of Lao Han. It won't take more than a few rounds of mah-jongg. I'm sure he remembers that his station is a product of the meatpacking plant—it wouldn't exist if not for us.’

  ‘There's nothing I can say,’ Father conceded, ‘except that I hope we don't inject our meat with formaldehyde.’

  ‘That goes without saying,’ Lao Lan responded solemnly. ‘It's a matter of conscience. Most of our customers are ordinary citizens, and we have a responsibility to safeguard their health. We'll inject only the purest water. Of course, adding a trace of formaldehyde would pose no danger—it could even protect them against cancer, slow the ageing process, prolong their life. But we've vowed not to add formaldehyde. We have long-range goals. We have moved beyond the independent butcher system. Now that we've come together as a united slaughterhouse, there are limits to what we do, and that includes not experimenting with the people's health.’ Smiling, he continued: ‘Before too long we'll evolve into a major enterprise with an automated production line—a living animal in one end and sausage and canned meats out the other. By then the water issue will be irrelevant.’

  ‘Under your leadership, we're certain to achieve that goal,’ declared Mother, charmed by his words.

  ‘Dream on, you two,’ Father said in icy tones. ‘But let's come back to the water issue. The question is: How do we do it? And how much? And what do we do if someone reports us? In the past, it was every family for itself. But now there are more mouths than we can control…’

  I walked into the room. ‘Dieh,’ I said, ‘I know an ideal way to inject water.’

  ‘What are you doing out of bed?’ he demanded. ‘Don't stick your nose where it doesn't belong.’

  ‘I'm not!’

  ‘Let's hear what he has to say,’ Lao Lan said. ‘Go ahead, Xiaotong, what's your brilliant idea?’

  ‘I know how it's done. I've watched every family in Slaughterhouse Village do it. They attach a high-pressure hose to the heart of a newly slaughtered animal. But since the animal is dead, its organs and cells can no longer absorb the water and half of it is lost. Why can't we inject water when the animal is still alive?’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Lao Lan said. ‘Go on, my young friend.’

  ‘I watched a doctor administer an IV once, and that gave me an idea. We'll do the same with the animals before they're slaughtered.’

  ‘But that's so slow,’ said Mother.

  ‘It doesn't have to be an IV,’ Lao Lan volunteered. ‘There are other ways. It's a great idea, no matter how you look at it. Injecting water into a living animal and into a dead one are radically different concepts.’

  ‘Adding water to a dead animal is injection,’ I said. ‘But adding it to a living animal is something different. It's cleansing their organs and their circulatory system. If you ask me, this meets both your output goals and your standard for high-quality meat.’

  ‘Worthy Nephew Xiaotong, I'm impressed,’ Lao Lan said. His fingers shook as he took a cigarette out of his case, lit it and took a drag. ‘Were you listening, Lao Luo? Your son puts us old-timers to shame. Our brains are stuck in a rut. He's right, we wouldn't be injecting meat with water—we'd be cleansing our cows of toxins and improving the quality of their meat. We can call it meat-cleansing.’

  ‘Does this mean I can work in the plant?’ I asked.

  ‘In theory you don't have to go to school, since you could cause Teacher Cai to die of apoplexy. But your future is at stake, and you're better off listening to your parents.’

  ‘I don't want to listen to them—I want to listen to you.’

  ‘I'm neutral on this,’ he said evasively. ‘If you were my son, I wouldn't force you to go to school. But you're not my son.’

  ‘So you're in favour of my working in the plant?’

  ‘What do you say, Lao Luo?’ Lao Lan asked.

  ‘No.’ Father was adamant. ‘Your mother and I both work there, and that's enough for one family.’

  ‘This plant will never succeed without me,’ I said. ‘None of you has an emotional attachment to meat, so you can't produce a top-quality product. Try me out for a month? If I don't do a good job, you can fire me and I'll go back to school. But if I do a good job, I'll stay on for a year. After that, I'll either return to school or go out on my own and see what the world has in store for me.’

  POW! 33

  A gourmet spread of a dozen delectable dishes has been laid out on a table three feet in diameter in a private room at the Huaiyang Chun restaurant on the third floor of a luxury hotel. Directly opposite the door, on the red velvet wall, hangs a ‘good fortune’ tapestry with a dragon and phoenix. Twelve chairs are arranged round the table, only one of which is occupied—by Lan Laoda. His chin rests in his hands and he has a melancholic air. Threads of steam waft from some of the
delicacies on the table in front of him but the rest have grown cold. A waiter in white, led into the room by a young woman in a red suit, is carrying a gold-plated tray on which rests a small plate of food dripping with golden-yellow gorgon oil and emitting a strange aroma. The woman takes the plate from the tray and places it in front of Lan Laoda. ‘Mr Lan,’ she whispers, ‘this is the nasal septum from one of Heilongjiang's rare Kaluga sturgeons, known popularly as a dragon bone. In feudal times, the dish was reserved for the enjoyment of the emperor. Its preparation is very complicated. Steeped for three days in white vinegar, it is then stewed for a day and a night in a pheasant broth. The owner personally prepared this for you. Enjoy it while it's hot.’ ‘Divide it into two portions,’ Lan Laoda says indifferently, ‘and wrap them to go. Then send them to the Feiyun Villa on Phoenix Mountain—one for Napoleon and one for Vivian Leigh.’ The woman's long, thin brows arch in astonishment but she dares not say a word. Lan Laoda stands up: ‘And send a bowl of plain noodles to my room.’