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high-quality meat—it was wasted on their inferior palates. They were easy marks too. If we told them that the meat of a chemically fattened animal came from one raised on grazing land, with an abundance of spring water, they'd smack their lips and say how good it tasted. I had to agree with Lao Lan, who had nothing good to say about the city-dwellers; he said they were evil and stupid, and that gave us the right to feed them as full of lies as we wanted. We weren't happy about that; but they didn't want to hear the truth and were prepared to take us to court if we so much as tried.

    The second animal Cheng Tianle led up was a milch cow with a spotted belly, also well up in years. Since it was too old to produce milk, the dairy owner had sold it as a beef cow. Beef from a milch cow is as poor as pork from a breeding sow—tasteless and pulpy. The sight of those loose, dried-up teats saddened me. An old milch cow and an old draft cow, two animals that had served man and served him well. They should have been put out to pasture to live out their lives and then been properly buried, with a marker if possible, perhaps even a headstone.

    There's no need for me to describe all the animals that followed. During my tenure, thousands of cows made their death march through the meat-cleansing building, and I remember each of them, body and face. As if a set of drawers in my head contains each of their photographs. They are drawers I don't like to open.

    The men knew the drill. So after leading the animals into the enclosures, they barricaded them in, with steel rods in the rear, to keep them from backing out during the treatment. If we'd set up a trough in front of the cages, our meat-cleansing station would have looked like a bright, spacious feed building. But there were no troughs in front of these animals, and they were not there to feed. I doubt that many of them knew what lay in store—most were blithely ignorant of their imminent death (which is why they stopped to graze before entering a slaughterhouse). It was time to inject the water, so I reminded the men to keep at their jobs. To dispel any misgivings, I reminded them that we were cleaning the animals’ inner organs—not pumping them full of water.

    The workers began by inserting rubber hoses up the animals’ noses, down through their throats and into their stomachs. The animals could shake and twist their heads as much as they wanted but the hoses stayed in place. The job required two men, one to raise the animal's head and the second to insert the hose. Some of the animals reacted violently to the invasion, others remained docile. But all resistance ceased once the hose was in—perhaps they finally realized it was too late. Hoses inserted, the men stood in front of the cows and awaited my order.

    ‘Start the water,’ I said, unemotionally.

    The taps were turned on. Two hundred and fifty, give or take ten, gallons over twelve hours.

    The system still had a few defects, as we discovered that first day. Some of the cows collapsed after taking in water for hours, others had coughing fits and vomited. But, whatever the problem, I always found a solution. To keep the animals from collapsing, I had the men insert a frame of steel rods under their bellies. And to keep them from vomiting, I had the men cover their eyes with a black cloth.

    The cows released a watery mess from their rear ends during the entire process. ‘Look!’ I said proudly to the men, ‘That's what this is all about. Our water is cleaning the filth inside them. Every cell in their bodies is being washed. Now you see why I said that we're not filling them with water—we're cleansing their internal organs. Filling them with water ruins the meat but what we're doing improves it. Even meat from sick and ageing cows will be tender and nutritious after such a thorough cleansing.’

    Finally, they were happy. I'd won them over. I'd taken the first major step in establishing my authority.

    The animals were to be taken to the kill room once the cleansing was complete. But the long hours spent standing in the cages caused their legs to buckle after only a few steps and then they collapsed like bulldozed walls. There was no way in which they were going to be able to get back on their feet. The first time that happened, I asked four men to lift the animal off the floor. They struggled until they were gasping for breath and sweating profusely but the animal hadn't budged an inch. It just lay