A small plot of land in a mountain village

Chapter 59 Killing Pigs

With twenty days left until the end of the year, every household began to busy themselves. Zhang Niu's family was no exception. Every year before the New Year, a thorough cleaning was done, signifying the sweeping away of the year's misfortunes and welcoming the new year. Zhang Niu was skeptical of all this. He didn't particularly like burning incense or lighting candles.

A year's worth of spring cleaning brings out a lot of trash in the house. It's all taken to the stream bank and piled up to burn. Not far from Zhang Niu, several other piles are also burning fiercely. Thick black smoke rises straight up, visible from afar. A pungent odor wafts through the air.

After a thorough cleaning, the house was much tidier. There were fewer cobwebs on the roof beams. My father told Zhang Niu to sleep at home tonight. The village butcher, Zhang, is coming over early tomorrow morning to help us slaughter a pig. It'll be a good opportunity for him to grab a pig's leg and help out.

Zhang Niu thought about it and realized it made sense. Now that they were slaughtering pigs, the pig's head meat and other cuts of meat could be taken out and eaten during the New Year. While it was still barely light, his mother was already boiling water in the largest iron pot in the mud stove in the kitchen. Even his younger sister, who usually loved to sleep, quickly got out of bed, dressed in her cotton-padded clothes. Slaughtering pigs was as appealing to the little boy as playing online games is to him now.

The large wooden tub for slaughtering pigs was placed in the front yard. Two extra-long, colorful stools were placed in front of the tub, side-by-side. The pig would be placed on these stools in the end. The stools and other equipment needed to be long and wide; otherwise, the butcher wouldn't be able to exert his strength.

Today we're not slaughtering that sow, but a large boar from another pen, weighing around 500 pounds. Those were piglets raised during the first month of the lunar calendar. The sow has now become a mother, giving birth to a litter of thirteen piglets, a stark contrast to the wild boar piglets at Happy Little Abode.

Several groups of villagers came to buy piglets. Zhang Niulang, however, wasn't planning to sell them. He intended to raise them free-range on his own Maotou Mountain.

They opened the gate and herded the still-sleeping boar out. Zhang Niu held a round rice bowl and waved it at the boar, startling it into running along the path to the front yard. The father and son, along with Zhang the butcher and his apprentice, made up four people. Zhang the butcher, in charge, held the boar by the tail, while Zhang Niu and the others carried the boar's body onto a long bench.

The boar on the stool thrashed about, squealing and trying to break free. Butcher Zhang pulled a stack of knives wrapped in cloth from a small wooden box. They were all commonly used knives: sharp knives, shaving knives, eviscerators. There were many kinds. Zhang Niu didn't recognize many of them. Butcher Zhang said they rarely replaced their knives, because they were uncomfortable to use because they caused too much pain when slaughtering pigs.

My mother poured boiling water into the large wooden tub three times. She then mixed it with about half a tub of cold water. Too much hot water would scald the pigskin, making it difficult for the butcher to shave the hair.

In the countryside, pigs are still slaughtered using the old methods, unlike in the city where they're stunned with electricity before killing. Butcher Zhang simply switched to a sharper knife and instructed Zhang Niu and the others to hold the boar's hind legs down firmly, lest it break free.

When they brought it up, the whole pig was already lying face down on the bench, its neck directly below the small wooden basin that had just been placed there. Zhang the butcher pressed down; there was a gash there that seemed to bleed quickly. He stabbed it with his knife, and red pig's blood gushed out. Instantly, the whole village could hear the pig's screams. The little girl next to her mother covered her eyes with her hand, afraid that the child would dream of seeing blood and be unable to sleep. The little girl still peeked out through her hand.

The boar was bleeding. It was kicking its legs with tremendous force; Zhang Niu almost couldn't hold it down. Five minutes later, the boar's strength waned, and its legs began to cramp. Everyone could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

The wooden basin filled with pig's blood was taken back to the kitchen and placed on the stove. Next came the small task of Zhang the butcher shaving the pig. While shaving, he asked his father to bring out a wooden ladder and prop it against the wall.

Shaving is effortless, using a black, semi-circular metal plate. It swishes away quickly and easily, seemingly very easy to use. However, the pig's ears are simpler, requiring considerable effort to remove the hair.

He rolled around a few times. The boar, which had just been covered in hair, was now completely white-faced, with no white hairs to be found. The boar's body also underwent a thorough cleaning. Butcher Zhang rummaged through his bag and found an iron chain with two sharp hooks at the end. He hooked it onto the boar's snout, hung it at the top of the wooden ladder, and the boar leaned against the ladder to make it easier to cut open its belly.

The mother cut off a large piece of the congealed pig's blood, put it in a pot to cook, and then used it to entertain Butcher Zhang.

After opening the pig's skull, the internal organs were removed: the heart, lungs, liver, and other parts were placed in a bucket. The pig was then chopped in half and placed in a bamboo basket. The pig slaughtering was considered complete. The father took out a red envelope from his pocket and handed it to him; the apprentice, of course, received nothing. A red envelope typically contained fifty or a hundred yuan, depending on the person's wealth.

After washing our hands, Mother called everyone into the kitchen. We ate some fresh pig's blood, accompanied by a bowl of yellow rice wine. It was made this autumn with glutinous rice grown at home; the alcohol content was low when the container was first opened.

Giving red envelopes and serving pig's blood soup are all necessary. Many young men want to learn pig slaughtering and become apprentices, but they need to be strong and muscular. Otherwise, carrying a pig would be exhausting; Zhang Niu almost couldn't lift it just now if it weren't for his over 1.8-meter-tall apprentice next to him...

Pig butchers generally live well; Butcher Zhang has even built a Western-style house, attracting many young men in the area who want to become his apprentices. With so many people vying for his services, it naturally takes effort to find the right one. Finally, they chose this apprentice, who is over six feet tall, as he learns quickly and it saves the master some effort.

After Butcher Zhang left, Father busied himself hanging the pig's head on the main beam of the house. Everything else was put aside; he was going to invite close friends over for lunch to enjoy some pork together.

The task of hiring people naturally fell to Zhang Niu. Now everyone in the village knows that Zhang Niu has made a lot of money raising ducks and fish, and wherever he goes, people ask him what to raise next year. Some are even planning to start leasing wasteland. The village chief laughed heartily.

Uncle, the village chief's family and a few other good ones can be reached by making some connections. Zhang Niu's relatives are mostly in other villages.

The tradition of slaughtering a pig and hosting a feast in the village had been going on for who knows how long, and every household did it. By the end of the year, if you were popular, you might even have several feasts. Every feast included plenty of wine and meat, until you were sick of it.

At lunchtime, the table was laden with spicy pork liver, chestnut and pork lung soup, dried vegetables, and large chunks of meat. Warm yellow wine was also served alongside. Eating meat and drinking wine heartily brought back memories of their youth for the older folks. Zhang Niu, who wasn't much of a drinker, could only focus on devouring the food. He practically finished off the whole plate of boiled pork belly by himself.

Those who were drinking continued drinking, while Zhang Niu, who had eaten his fill, carried a bag of oil and fat back to Happy House to prepare a treat for Xiao Hei and the Big Wolf. A 500-pound pig had a lot of fat and other things, and he also brought back quite a few pieces of the pig's stomach and intestines that couldn't be eaten. Good things shouldn't be wasted.

Little Black was too small and might not be able to digest it, so he was given pig fat. The Big Wolf and the Second Wolf were given pig intestines. There was no fighting over the food. Zhang Niu was most afraid that the wolves and dogs would fight over the food when it was divided, as Little Black was no match for them.

Second update. I was originally going to post three updates today. This morning a friend asked me to go with him to buy a computer. I thought it was in a small town, but we ended up in the city. We got back very late and I was quite tired. Sorry. I've started a thread about the female lead; feel free to comment. I'll decide how to write it then.