Pignettes

By Gordon Shi

种田不养猪，秀才不读书

I was the third child my father raised to adulthood. My able-bodied twin brother snatched the title of second place only two minutes before I entered this world. But several decades ago, a pig had already claimed gold. 

I.

A long, long time ago, when my father looked as if his weight and his age had barely hit double digits, Chairman Mao decided that all educated Chinese youth ought to be sent down into the countryside to learn about hard work and honest living from the rural proletariat. By then, Little Ping had scarcely touched a schoolbook. His hopes of continuing his education with all the other boys and girls had been dashed after his father was apprehended by the police. They had called him a “rightist” or a “counter-revolutionary” or some other word Ping didn’t know the meaning of, but the nebulous charges had distinctly painful ramifications, and Ping was pulled out of all his classes. Now, whatever remained of his dreams of reading the classics had dissolved in a train’s smokestack. By the time he arrived in the rustic Anhui village he would call home, his ragged shirt was stained with tears.    

Ping’s older sister kept him company for the first few months he spent in the village. She was firm, but gentle. She had the kind of lovingly authoritative presence which could temper Ping’s restless and imaginative spirit. Soon, however, she was called upon to work a factory job in the city, and Ping’s only company from then on was the pig they were raising together. His potbellied friend wasn’t much for conversation, but Ping took great pleasure in watching him eat. Every evening, Ping took a heaping of sweet potatoes—usually more than he himself could consume with his meager frame—and mashed it up before dumping it into the basin he had set on the ground. Like clockwork, the pig would amble over, plunge his head into the basin, and feverishly chomp away at his meal, sending little clumps of potatoes flying over the basin’s edges as he shook his head and gnashed his teeth. He wouldn’t come up for air until the basin was licked clean, always leaving Ping wondering how it was possible to prioritize nutrition over oxygen. 

Ping’s enjoyment of the pig’s gluttony came from an ulterior motive. A father delights in seeing his boy scarf down meals because he envisions the strong young man that the food will help him become. But Ping delighted in watching his pig indulge himself because a hungrier pig becomes a heavier pig, and a pig that weighed at least 130 jin could get you between 60 and 100 yuan from the local butcher. In his village, that was enough to cover the cost of a year’s supply of food or medicine. It might even have netted you luxuries like a couple pounds of meat or wheat flour for making noodles and dumplings to celebrate the New Year. Pigs were the only way any of the villagers could make so much money in one sale; Chairman Mao forbade individuals from planting cash crops like sesame or soybean, and any grain the villagers could grow was collected and redistributed by the commune. 

After his sister left, Ping’s best friend in the village was a boy about three years older than him named Xintian. Xintian wasn’t much stronger than Ping, but he was taller and a lot more capable. He developed skills in farmwork and domestic labor by necessity. Xintian’s father had died of starvation amidst a nationwide famine so devastating that people stripped trees bare of their bark and gnawed on the dead wood. He felt the pressure to step up and be the man of the house. Nobody else was going to care for his mother and younger brother Ningjian.

Ping, by contrast, was not as adept. He hadn’t even had the opportunity to learn to cook from his sister. When Xintian learned of this, he made Ping an offer. 

“Come eat at my house,” he implored. “My mother will cook food for you better than anything you’ve ever tasted.”

“I can’t take you up on that,” Ping replied.

“I insist,” Xintian demanded. “You’re my brother. You should eat at my table.”

Ping hesitated. The promise of homemade dinner echoed throughout his mind, reverberating like the pangs of hunger in his gut. His humility was at war with his stomach. Finally, he spoke.

“Who’s going to feed my pig?”

“He can eat with our pig,” Xintian replied.

After that night, the villagers picked up on a peculiar tradition. Every evening, when the sky painted the landscape red, a scrawny, raggedy kid would leave his home and begin his daily trek across the village. By itself, it wasn’t an unusual sight. What made the xiangqi players look up from their boards and the stray dogs stop chasing their tails was the little pig skipping daintily behind the boy, following like a disproportionately chubby shadow. “Hey look,” the villagers chuckled. “Ping and his pig are headed to the dining hall!”

Noodles were a delicacy the average villager usually consumed only on special occasions. But at Xintian’s house, Ping ate noodles twice a week. Xintian’s mother had decided that the family’s entire supply of wheat flour should go to him.

“We’re used to this hard life,” Xintian’s mother reasoned. Ping tried to protest, but she always shut him down. “You need this more than any of us.”

“Well what about Ningjian?” Ping asked. “He’s even younger than me.”

“You’re a city boy. Your stomach wouldn’t get used to the all sweet potato diet.”

Ping looked over at his pig. The ignorant creature was lost in the sweet potato slop.

At least one of us can, Ping thought.

II.

As the year came to a close, Ping’s pig was getting rather large. Ping boiled with anticipation at the thought of returning on his investment. The pig had been a cute friend, but he was destined for a greater purpose. Ping shook with glee at the handful of coins clinking together in his imagination. He’d have some meat, or some dumplings, or some youtiao. Perhaps he’d also pay off his mother’s debts. Perhaps he’d even be able to buy something for Xintian’s family to repay them for all their kindness. 

There was an old wives’ tale among villagers that cautioned families against weighing their pigs. The heavier the pig, the higher its value, but for some reason, everyone believed that the repeated weighing of a pig would cause its growth to stagnate. Ping wasn’t dismissive about superstitions, but his excitement outweighed their gravity. Day after day, he obsessively assessed his pig’s weight with the shoddy little scale he owned. The pig was growing alright, and before long, he became so heavy that Ping, for fear of breaking the scale, stopped weighing him. He didn’t like the uncertainty of not knowing whether the pig was heavy enough to reach the 130 jin minimum. Ping was truly grateful for the sweet potatoes Xintian’s family was willing to split between the two pigs. Nothing could change that. But still, as his pig’s weight remained a question mark, his anxiety coalesced with some primeval part of him that wished Xintian would fill the basin just a little bit higher. 

As Ping’s sweet potato supply dwindled and his coin purse grew lighter, the money the pig would bring in seemed less like a daydream and more like a necessity. Ping decided it was time to say goodbye to the poor animal. This nameless companion, this habitual heavy eater who brought more laughter into his village than he could ever know, would pay a messianic price for his owner’s salvation from starvation. Ping left home and headed towards the slaughterhouse, the pig in tow. The pig oinked and squealed as he bounced along, as if he believed that there was a last supper in store for him at the end of the nine li walk.

The butcher was a friend of Ping’s grandmother, a stately man who was known to all as Old Liu, or occasionally, Big Mountain Liu. With his kindhearted smile and long whiskers, Ping thought that he looked like one of the Red Army’s soldiers, the ones that Ping had seen at the movies. He had the kind of disarming countenance that made one feel as if he were their grandfather. Ping greeted him beaming as he stepped into the slaughterhouse with the pig behind him. 

“That’s quite a specimen you’ve brought for me today, Ping,” he laughed heartily. “Let’s see if he makes the cut.”

As the pig stepped onto the scale, Ping’s heart sank. 126 jin.

“I’m sorry, but it looks like we can’t take him,” Old Liu said softly. Ping felt a lump rising in his throat. He turned towards the door.

“We’re not out of options yet,” another butcher chimed in, and Ping’s ears perked up. As per slaughterhouse policy, the butcher explained, they couldn’t sell a pig that weighed 126 jin, but they could still butcher it. If there was enough meat in the carcass to meet the requisite amount stipulated by the commune, Ping could still sell that meat, even though his pig as a whole didn’t weigh 130 jin. Ping found this option well worth a shot. He looked down at his pig and found him wearing a clueless grin that said I’m not quite sure what’s being discussed right now, but I don’t disagree! 

Ping gave the “OK” and Old Liu began hacking away at the pig, chopping with surgical precision, taking great care to carve out as much edible meat as possible, particularly from its chubby cheeks and its thick neck. For a brief moment, something overshadowed Ping’s anticipation. He didn’t like that he was feeling this way. It was just a pig, and there was no point in mourning a pig when you could easily acquire another one who’d eat your potatoes the same way. What did it matter if no other pig would follow you around like a puppy? Ping told himself that the pangs he felt in his chest were just those of hunger, a weak argument considering he knew what hunger pangs felt like. He turned to look at the reading on the scale. He had scored a clear victory, despite the great cost. Ping left the body of his friend in the arms of the butcher and took away 60 yuan.

Later on, Ping made two expensive payments. The first went home to his mother to alleviate her financial burden. The second covered the cost of a bike which his sister in the city could use to get to and from work. After these expenses, he didn’t have a single coin left. Next time he would repay Xintian for sure.

III.

Ping’s pig’s vice had been gluttony, but Xintian’s pig was afflicted by another deadly sin. One morning, Ping and Xintian walked outside and saw her snared in a peculiar entanglement. She was squealing with vigor, intensity, and lust, reveling in a way none of the villagers knew she could, and just behind her, a dwarfish young pig echoed her cries. This smaller pig had reared up on his hind legs, placing his hooves squarely on the backside of Xintian’s pig, as if to hold her in place, and was thrusting with the might of an animal who had gone his whole life harboring a need to prove his virility. 

Ping and Xintian couldn’t help but burst out laughing at the sight of it. 

“What damage does he think his small little weapon is going to do?” They asked. Ping and Xintian felt it was comical that the little pig could even hope to make his partner feel something, and if it was fatherhood he desired, he could kiss those dreams goodbye. By all accounts, Xintian’s pig had been spayed. She was never meant to bear children, even after all that porking. 

A few months later, Xintian’s pig gave birth to eight piglets.

Neither Ping nor Xintian said a word as they stared down at the content new mother. The little guy had clearly accomplished the impossible, but this was not a feat worth celebrating. Even if Xintian’s family had given up their entire stash of potatoes as a maternity gift, it still wouldn’t have provided enough nutrition for a mother nursing eight piglets. Xintian’s pig was a loving, giving mother, but despite her best efforts, three of her piglets never lived past their infancy. 

Xintian’s pig’s motherhood was as unpragmatic as it was tragic because it complicated Xintian’s desire to sell the pig. No butcher worth his yuan would ever take a pig that had given birth, since something about the birthing process invariably spoiled the taste of the meat. Ping and Xintian began to discuss their conundrum. Ping’s mother had intense personal convictions about honesty, but hunger and desperation suggested that if Old Liu didn’t know that the pig had given birth, he wouldn’t have any reservations about buying it. So when the time came, Xintian and Ping took Xintian’s pig to the slaughterhouse and walked in with poker faces and sealed lips. Ping and Xintian held their breaths as Old Liu furrowed his brows. They didn’t exhale as he walked around the pig one time, two times, three times. Finally, he turned to Xintian and Ping and spoke. 

“Why did you bring me a mother pig?” Old Liu asked. 

“She’s never given birth,” Xintian replied. The lie left a bitter taste in his mouth and Old Liu shook his head dismissively. 

“This is a mother pig that has given birth about three months ago,” Old Liu continued. “She had eight piglets. Three died, five survived.”

Ping and Xintian decided that of all the supernatural deities who danced through the folklore they had grown up hearing, one must have been the culprit for whispering such knowledge into Old Liu’s ears. There was no possible way he could have known which piglets had lived and which piglets had died. Ping would later assert to Xintian that there was a chance that this stately gentleman caked and smeared in the blood of livestock was god himself masquerading as a butcher. Years would elapse before Ping and Xintian learned that Old Liu was simply staring at the nipples on the mother pig’s belly. Each nursing piglet had a favorite nipple they never deviated from, and by observing which ones had been chewed on, Old Liu knew how many piglets were enjoying their mother’s milk. 

The night they walked home from the slaughterhouse, Ping and Xintian ate their sweet potatoes in silence. They sat in the ambience of the sloppy chewing coming from Xintian’s pig, a happy, hungry mother who never knew how close she came to the chopping block.

IV.

News of a plague affecting Anhui’s pig population couldn’t spread as fast as the disease itself could. From village to village, swaths of pigs met torturous ends as their unshakeable fevers eventually erupted into death throes. Farmers stood by as their livestock perished. They could do nothing but watch, and trying any herbal remedy was like attempting to extinguish a raging wildfire with an empty bucket. 

Ping understood that his village’s economy could not handle a viral outbreak. Too many people depended on pigs for their livelihoods. But after he watched Xintian’s pig lethargically trudge away from her basin without having touched her favorite food, Ping understood that the outbreak was already here. He remembered Old Liu’s smile, rugged yet warm, and he wondered if Old Liu would still be smiling in the face of this threat to his business. He suddenly recalled that the butcher had a colleague at the slaughterhouse who was a veterinarian, one who had special expertise in the treatment of pigs. Ping walked to the slaughterhouse to seek his advice. With neither two-legged nor four-legged companion tagging along, his footsteps sounded a lot quieter. 

“Is the old girl running a fever?” the vet asked. He didn’t look at Ping as he spoke. His attention seemed bound to the stack of boxes he was busy rifling through. 

“Yes, and she won’t eat,” Ping replied.

“And have you noticed any red dots under her armpit?”

“Yes,” Ping answered, wondering how all the men at the slaughterhouse came to such accurate conclusions after looking for such subtle, random, and inexplicable things. 

“Thought so,” the vet remarked. “Swine erysipelas. Textbook case.”

Ping stared at the vet, who understood his nonverbal plea for an explanation.

“It’s a bacterial infection. Common in pigs, but it’s also been known to affect poultry and other animals. In its most acute form, it can cause high fever, skin lesions, depression, and even anorexia, which explains why your little friend doesn’t have much of an appetite.” 

“So is she going to die? Can you cure her?” Ping begged. 

“Easily,” the vet assured, and Ping breathed a sigh of relief. “I can even let you cure her. All you need is some penicillin.” 

The vet pulled two large boxes from his stack and handed them to Ping, along with a syringe large enough to make Ping feel grateful it was for pig use only.

“Here, I gave you a little bit extra,” the vet said. With the quantity of the penicillin in the boxes, “a little bit” was a generous understatement, but the vet knew that if one pig had come down with the disease, all of the village’s pigs were likely infected. 

“We can’t thank you enough,” Ping responded earnestly, and the vet brushed off his gratitude with a gentle wave.

“Now when you inject the pig with the solution,” the vet instructed, “make sure you stick the syringe into her neck fat, just behind her ear. She’s not gonna like it, so you might want a couple of friends to help you keep her in place.” 

Ping walked back from the slaughterhouse with the penicillin boxes clinking in his arms. How many times had he walked these nine li before? How many times had he led a happy-go-lucky creature who he’d nourished, looked after, and laughed with to the gallows in the facility at the end of the road? Now here he was, bloodied hands grasping the cure to an apocalypse, twiggy legs carrying him past the halfway point between transgression and redemption. 

When Ping arrived at Xintian’s house that evening, he wasted no time administering the solution. Xintian grabbed his pig by her backside as his younger brother held her by the ears. Ping pushed the syringe into her neck fat and Xintian’s pig squealed with agony. As the three boys struggled against her spasming body, Ping reflected on how happy his pig had been when he walked him to the slaughterhouse. Pigs are smart animals, he thought, but they never know what’s good for themselves. 

Next morning, Xintian poured a new serving of sweet potato slop into his pig’s basin. He watched anxiously with Ping as his pig walked over to it. She circled the basin, poked and prodded it a few times, and twitched her head from side to side as if she had neither seen nor smelled sweet potatoes before. Then, with the grace of an Olympic diver, she plunged her head into the basin. Ping and Xintian cheered as she devoured her meal. A bright pink hue was already rushing back into her pale skin. 

News of Ping’s medical miracle would spread faster than the disease could. Soon, people would be lined up outside of his house with their pigs, waiting for him to administer a small dosage of the penicillin he had taken from the slaughterhouse. They’d walk from neighboring villages and beyond to have their animals cured, and one by one, the pigs would return from the brink of death with a renewed vitality. Ping would be hailed as a hero. From then on, he would be known to all as “Dr. Shi,” a nickname he needed neither a medical license nor even an education to earn.

But this fanfare didn’t matter at that moment. As Ping sat in front of the pig with Xintian and his family, he decided there was no greater joy than listening to their companion pig out. 

—

My father no longer struggles to decide whether he wants to make debt payments or buy wheat flour. He lives in a comfortable two-story house with his wife and children, none of whom know the acrid haze of blood permeating slaughterhouses or the maddening frustration of injecting a screaming, bucking animal. He still loves watching his two children eat. It gives him great comfort to know how strong they’ve grown.

In fact, I’m willing to bet we’d fetch him an easy 200 yuan.