Mo Yan - Pow!

‘Eat up,’ he said. ‘Stretch your stomach as far as it'll go. Here's a sheep's leg. There are dogs’ legs in there, pig's knuckles and oxtails. Take your pick.’

I looked down at the tortured expression on the sheep's leg.

‘I saw everything,’ I said coldly.

‘You saw what?’

‘Everything.’

Huang Biao scratched his neck and released yet another sinister laugh. ‘I hate those people,’ he said. ‘They come here every day for a free meal, and I hate them. This has nothing to do with your parents—’

‘But they'll eat this too!’

‘Yes, they will,’ he said with a smile. ‘The ancients have said, “What the eye does not see cannot be dirty.” Don't you agree? If you want the truth, the urine makes the meat fresher and more tender. What you saw as urine is really fine cooking wine.’

‘Then you eat it.’

‘Now that poses a psychological problem, because people aren't supposed to drink their own urine.’ He laughed. ‘But since you saw what happened, I guess I can't expect you to eat any of it.’ He dumped the sheep's leg back into the pot, picked up the platter with the meat he'd taken out before urinating and set it down in front of me. ‘You saw that this meat was taken out before the “cooking wine” was added, old friend, so you can eat it with no worries.’ Next he picked up a bowl of garlic paste off the chopping board and set it in front of me. ‘Dip the meat in this. Your Uncle Huang cooks the best meat. Fully cooked but not mushy, fatty but not greasy. They hired me for one reason alone—so they could enjoy the meat I prepare.’

I cast my eyes at the platter brimming with joyous promise, observed the expressions of excitement, marvelled at the little hands that quivered like tendrils on a grapevine and listened to the mellifluous buzzing of speech, all of which moved me to my soul. It spoke softly, but what it said was clear and distinct, each word a gem of comprehensible speech. It called my name and described itself as wonderful, it revealed to me how pure and untainted it was, it spoke to me of its youth and beauty: ‘We were once part of a living dog or a cow or a pig or a sheep,’ it said, ‘but we were washed three times and then steeped in boiling water for three hours and we are now independent living beings with powers of thought and, of course, emotion. The infusion of salt imbued us with souls, the injection of vinegar and alcohol supplied us with emotions and the addition of onions, ginger, anise, cinnamon, cardamom and pepper imbued us with expression. We belong to you, to you alone, you are whom we sought. We called out to you when we were suffering the agonies of boiling water, we longed for you. We want you to eat us and we are fearful of being eaten by anyone but you. Yet we have no say in the matter. A woman has the ability to end her life to preserve her chastity but even that is denied us. We were born in debased circumstances and are resigned to our fate. If you had not come to feast upon us, who knows to which low and vulgar mouths that privilege would be granted. They might take a single bite before tossing us onto a table to soak in cheap liquor spills. Or they might stub out their cigarettes on our bodies and poison our souls with nicotine and pungent smoke. Together with the skins of shrimp and crabs and soiled paper napkins, they will sweep us into garbage pails. The world can boast a handful of individuals like you, people who love, understand and appreciate meat, Luo Xiaotong. Dear Luo Xiaotong, you love meat and meat loves you. We love you, so come eat us. Being eaten by you makes us feel like a bride being taken by the man she loves. Come, Xiaotong, our virtual husband, what are you waiting for? What is bothering you? Come, don't waste another minute. Tear us apart, chew us up, send us straight down into your guts. Whether or not you know it, all the meat in the world longs for you, it admires you. All the meat in the world considers you its lover, so what is holding you back? Ah, Luo Xiaotong, our lover, might you be worried that we're unclean? Worried that when we were still attached to dogs, cows, sheep and pigs, we were contaminated by feed that included growth hormones, lean meat powder and other poisons? You are right to be concerned about this cruel reality. Unadulterated meat is a rarity in this world—you can look high and low and still be frustrated in your search for animals untainted by poisons in their sheds cotes sties and pens, finding instead only hormonal cows, chemical sheep, garbage pigs and prescription dogs. But we are clean, Xiaotong, we have been brought here from deep in South Mountain by Huang Biao on orders from your father. We are we are cows and sheep that have grown to maturity grazing grassy fields and drinking spring water, we are pigs that ran wild in remote mountain ravines and we are local dogs that have grown to adulthood eating bran and wild plants. Not once, either before or after being slaughtered, were we subjected to the injection of water, and we never came into contact with a drop of formaldehyde. You will not easily find meat as pure and uncontaminated as us. So hurry up and eat, Luo Xiaotong. If you don't, Huang Biao will. Though he pretends to be a dutiful son, though he treats a cow as his mother and though he supplies his dogs, his hormonal animals, with her milk, he injects his butchered dogs with water and he's the last person we want to eat us…’

I was nearly moved to tears by how the meats poured out their hearts to me. But before I could cry, anguished wails erupted from their counterparts in the pot. ‘Luo Xiaotong,’ they said, ‘please eat us too. Even though that bastard Huang Biao doused us with his urine, we're still much cleaner than any meat on the street. We are free of toxins, we are highly nutritious, we are clean. Please eat us, Xiaotong, we beg you…’

That did it—my tears dripped onto the pieces of meat on the platter, and that made them even sadder. They rocked back and forth in anguish, causing the platter to bounce on the stool and nearly breaking my heart. That's when I finally grasped the reality that the world is a very complicated place. No matter what he's dealing with, even if it's a piece of meat, a person must let love flow from his heart if he is to be repaid in kind—that is the only way to truly appreciate what is good and decent. In the past, I'd hungered for meat but had not loved it enough, even though meat had been so good to me, the person it had picked out of the vast sea of humanity to be its friend, to my enduring shame. I surely could do better. All right, meats, dear meats, the time has come for me to feast on you so as to be worthy of your abiding love. To be loved and respected by such fine, uncontaminated meat has made Luo Xiaotong the world's happiest person.

With tears in my eyes, I began eating you. I heard you cry in my mouth but I knew that you were shedding tears of joy. Tearfully I ate the tearful meats, and felt that we had embarked on the path to spiritual awakening. This was a first for me, and my relationship with meat underwent a fundamental change. As did my approach to my fellow humans. I heard an old greybeard from deep in the mountains say to me: ‘There are many paths a human can take to achieve immortality.’ ‘Is eating meat one of them?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ he replied with a sneer, ‘and so is eating shit.’ I understood everything, then. The day I found myself able to hear meat speak I knew that I was different. That was one of the reasons I'd left school. What could I learn from any teacher that I couldn't learn from meat?

While I ate, Huang Biao stood watching me like a fool. I had neither the energy nor the interest to look at him. As I continued my intimate relationship with the meat, the kitchen and everything in it ceased to exist. But when I came up for air, those glittering little demon's eyes of his were reminders that he too was a living creature.