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of independents’, he was the first to get rich in the butcher trade. Not only that, he helped the village get rich too. And just when the independent butchers began to get a bad name, he founded the United Meatpacking Plant. We've done well by keeping up with him.’

    ‘I can't help seeing myself play-acting like a monkey in a cap,’ Father remarked glumly. ‘And this outfit makes it worse.’

    ‘What am I going to do with you?’ Mother said. ‘Like I said, learn from Lao Lan.’

    ‘He's a monkey in a cap too, as I see it.’

    ‘Who isn't? And that includes your friend Lao Han. No more than a few months back, wasn't he only a no-account mess cook? But then he put on a uniform and turned into a hypocrite.’

    ‘Niang's right,’ I said, thinking it was time I said something. ‘The old saying “A man's known by his clothes, a horse by its saddle” got it right. As soon as you put on a suit, you became a peasant-turned-entrepreneur.’

    ‘These days there are more of those than fleas on a dog,’ Father said. ‘Xiaotong, I want you and Jiaojiao to study hard so you can leave this place and get a decent job out there somewhere.’

    ‘I've been meaning to talk to you about that, Dieh. I want to quit school.’

    ‘What?’ He grew very stern. ‘Just what do you plan to do?’

    ‘I want to work at the meatpacking plant.’

    ‘What's there for you to do?’ he said unhappily. ‘For years it was me who kept you from going to school. Now you must cherish this opportunity if you're to have any hope for a decent future. Don't throw your life away like I did. No, go to school and work hard. Education is the path to success. Everything else will lead you astray.’

    ‘I don't agree with you, Dieh! First, I don't think you threw your life away. Second, I don't believe that education is the only path to success. Third, and most importantly, I don't think I can learn anything useful in school. My teacher doesn't know as much as I do.’

    ‘I don't care,’ he insisted, ‘I want you to stick it out for a few years.’

    ‘Dieh, I have strong feelings for meat. And I can help you with lots of things at the plant. I can hear the meat speak to me. Did you know that it's a living organism? I can see it wave to me with all its little hands.’

    Father stared at me, as if he'd been strung up by his tie. Then he and Mother exchanged looks. I knew they thought I must be losing my mind. I'd assumed that Father, if not Mother, would understand my feelings. He, at least, had a vivid imagination. But, no. His imagination, it seemed, had dried up.

    Mother walked up and rubbed my head, both to show her concern and to to see if I had fever. If I did, then she knew that what she'd heard was wild talk, delirium. But I wasn't running a fever, I was absolutely all right. There was nothing wrong with me or my mind, not a thing.

    ‘Xiaotong,’ she said, ‘don't be silly. You have to go to school. I was so obsessed with money all this while that I never stopped to think about your education. But now I understand that the world offers many things more valuable than money. So do as we say and go to school. You may not want to listen to your father and me, but you'll listen to Lao Lan, won't you? It was he who made us realize that you and your sister belong in school.’

    ‘I don't want to go either,’ protested Jiaojiao. ‘The meat speaks to me too, and waves to me with all its little hands. And sings, and has feet. Its hands and feet are like kittens’ paws, clawing and moving…’ She gestured in the air as she tried to demonstrate how the meat moved before.

    I was impressed by her vivid imagination. Only four, and from a different mother, but our hearts beat in unison. I'd never mentioned that meat spoke to me or that it had hands, but she knew what I meant and gave me the support I needed.

    Frightened by our strange talk of meat, our parents could only stare at us blankly. If the phone hadn't rung at that moment they'd have stood there all day, still staring. Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that we'd had a telephone installed, though it was for internal use only and controlled by a switchboard at the village headquarters. Still, it was a telephone, one that connected our house with Lao Lan's and the houses of several local cadres. Mother moved to answer it.

    I knew it was Lao Lan.

    ‘Lao Lan wants us to go to the plant right away,’ she said to Father after hanging up. ‘People from the county