It was Lao Lan who invented the scientific method of

forcing pressurized water into the pulmonary arteries

of slaughtered animals. With this method, you could
empty a bucketful of water into a two-hundred-jin
pig, while with the old method you could barely
empty half a bucket of water into the carcass of a
dead cow. The amount of money that the clever
townspeople have spent on water from our village
when they thought they were paying for meat in the
years since will never be known, but Im sure it
would be a shockingly high figure.
Lao Lan had a substantial potbelly and rosy cheeks;
his voice rang out like a pealing bell. In a word, he
was born to be a rich official. After rising to the
position of village head, he selflessly taught his
fellow-villagers the water-injection method and
served as the leader of a local riches-through-ruse
movement. Some villagers spoke out angrily and
some attacked him on wall posters, calling him a
member of the retaliatory landlord class, which was
intent on overthrowing the rule of the village
proletariat. But talk like that was out of fashion. Over
the village P.A. system, Lao Lan announced,
Dragons beget dragons, phoenixes beget phoenixes,
and a mouse is born only to dig holes. Sometime
later, we came to realize that he was like a kung-fu
master who will never pass on all his skills to his
apprenticeswho holds back enough for a safety net.
Lao Lans meat was water-injected, like everyone
elses, but his looked fresher and smelled sweeter.
You could leave it out in the sun for two days and it
wouldnt spoil, while others would be maggot-
infested if it didnt sell the first day. So Lao Lan
never had to worry about cutting prices if his supply
did not sell right away; meat that looked as good as
his was never in danger of going unsold.
My father, Luo Tong, told me it wasnt water that
Lao Lan injected into his meat but formaldehyde. My
father was much smarter than Lao Lan. Hed never
studied physics, but he knew all about positive and
negative electricity; hed never studied biology, but
he was an expert on sperm and eggs; and hed never
studied chemistry, but he was well aware that
formaldehyde can kill bacteria, keep meat from
spoiling, and stabilize proteins, which is how he
guessed that Lao Lan had injected formaldehyde into
his meat. If getting rich had been on my fathers
agenda, hed have had no trouble becoming the
wealthiest man in the village, of that Im sure. But he
was a dragon among men, and dragons have no
interest in accumulating property. Youve seen
critters like squirrels and rats dig holes to store food,
but whos ever seen a tiger, the king of the animals,
do something like that? Tigers spend most of their
time sleeping in their lairs, coming out only when
hunger sends them hunting for prey. Similarly, my
father spent most of his time holed up, eating,
drinking, and having a good time, coming out only
when hunger pangs sent him looking for income.
Never for a moment did he resemble Lao Lan and
people of that ilk, who accumulated blood money,
putting a knife in white and taking it out red. Nor was
he interested in going down to the train station to
earn a porters wages by the sweat of his brow, like
some of the coarser village men. Father made his
living by his wits.
In ancient times, there was a famous chef named Pao
Ding, who was an expert at carving up cows. In
modern times, there was a man who was an expert at
sizing them upmy father. In Pao Dings eyes, cows
were nothing but bones and edible flesh. Thats what
they were in my fathers eyes, too. Pao Dings vision
was as sharp as a knife; my fathers was as sharp as a
knife and as accurate as a scale. What I mean to say
is: if you were to lead a live cow up to my father,
hed take two turns around it, three at most,
occasionally sticking his hand up under the animals
forelegjust for showand confidently report its
gross weight and the quantity of meat on its bones,
always to within a kilo of what might register on the
digital scale used in Englands largest cattle
slaughterhouse. At first, people thought my father
was just a windbag, but after testing him several
times they were believers. His presence took blind
luck out of the equation in dealings between
cattlemen and butchers, and established a basis of
fairness. Once his authority was in place, both the
cattlemen and the butchers courted his favor, hoping
to gain an edge. But, as a man of vision, he would
never jeopardize his reputation for petty profits, since
by doing so hed smash his rice bowl. If a cattleman
came to our house with a gift of wine and cigarettes,
my father tossed them into the street, then climbed
our garden wall and cursed loudly. If a butcher came
with a gift of a pigs head, my father flung it into the
street, then climbed our garden wall and cursed
loudly. Both the cattlemen and the butchers said that
Luo Tong was an idiot, but the fairest man they
knew.
People trusted him implicitly. If a transaction reached
a stalemate, the parties would look at him to
acknowledge that they wanted things settled. Lets
quit arguing and hear what Luo Tong has to say!
All right, lets do that. Luo Tong, you be the judge!
With a cocky air, my father would walk around the
animal twice, looking at neither the buyer nor the
seller, then glance up into the sky and announce the
gross weight and the amount of meat on the bone,
followed by a price. Hed then wander off to smoke a
cigarette. Buyer and seller would reach out and
smack hands. Good! Its a deal! Once the
transaction was completed, buyer and seller would
come up to my father and each would hand him a ten-
yuan note and thank him for his labors. What must be
made clear is that, before my father showed up at the
cattle auctions, the deals had been negotiated by old-
style brokers, dark, gaunt, wretched old men, some
with queues hanging down their backs, who were
proficient in the art of haggling by finger signs
hidden in wide, overlapping sleeves, thus lending the
profession an air of mystery. My father effectively
drove the shifty-eyed brokers off the stage of history.
This remarkable advance in the buying and selling of
cattle on the hoof could, with only a bit of
exaggeration, be called revolutionary. My fathers
keen eye was not limited to cattle but worked on pigs
and sheep as well. Like a master carpenter who can
build a table but can also build a chair and, if hes
especially talented, a coffin, my father had no trouble
sizing up even camels.