Pow!

meat, too bad I can't recreate my sterling achievements, too bad I can only experience my, as well as United Meatpacking Plant's, glorious history by calling upon my memories.

    When the rest of the workers heard about the meat-eating contest, the day-shifters stayed back and the night-shifters showed up early. A crowd of more than a hundred filled the yard outside the kitchen to see the spectacle unfold…At this point in my narrative, I need to stop and talk about something else. Back in the day of street-corner storytellers, this is what they called ‘one plant, double stems, two flowers, focusing on one first’.

    During a rest period back in the commune era, when the villagers combined their labour, two individuals took part in a chilli-pepper-eating contest. The winner was to receive a pack of cigarettes, donated by the production team leader. The competitors were my father and Lao Lan. Both were fifteen or sixteen at the time—no longer boys, not yet men. The peppers chosen for the contest were no run-of-the-mill variety but of a special type known as goat horns. Each contestant was given forty long, thick, purple peppers, just one of which was capable of reducing most men to crying for their mothers. The team leader's pack of cigarettes would not be easily won. Not knowing what my father and Lao Lan looked like back then, I've had to rely on my imagination. They were friends but they were also rivals, each trying to outdo the other at activities like wrestling, usually without a clear winner or loser. It does not take much imagination to conjure up a picture of two men eating forty peppers each; on the other hand, it's a scene impossible to describe. Forty goat horn peppers create a substantial pile, tipping the scales at two pounds at least. No clear winner emerged after the first round of twenty, nor after the second. The judge, their production team leader, observing how red the combatants’ faces had grown, fearfully called it a draw and offered each a pack of cigarettes. They would have none of that. So, on to the third round, with twenty more peppers. When they were halfway through the seventeenth pepper, Lao Lan tossed it along with his last two to the ground and conceded defeat. Almost immediately he bent over, his arms wrapped round his stomach, his face covered with sweat, and spewed out a stream of green—some said purple—liquid. My father finished his eighteenth pepper but, before he could bite into the nineteenth, blood began to seep out of his nostrils. The production leader sent a member of his team to buy two packs of the most expensive cigarettes. That contest became one of the village's most significant events of the commune era, and no talk of an eating competition ever ended without its mention. A few years later, a fritter-eating contest was held at the station restaurant between one of the porters—a man so well known for his appetite that he was nicknamed Big Belly Wu—and my father, then eighteen. Father was delivering beets to the station with other members of his team. Big Belly Wu was strutting up and down the platform, patting his belly and daring one of them to take him up on his challenge. Disgusted by the man's behaviour, the team leader asked what the challenge entailed. ‘Eating!’ Wu replied. ‘I can out-eat anyone!’ ‘That's a boast I don't think you can back up,’ laughed the team leader. ‘That's Big Belly Wu!’ someone sidled up to him and whispered. ‘This is his hangout, and this is how he gets free meals. He can eat so much at one sitting that he doesn't have to eat again for three days.’ The team leader glanced at my father and gave another little laugh. ‘My friend, there's always a better man and a higher heaven.’ ‘I'm ready to find out if you are,’ grinned Wu. ‘What are you eating?’ asked the team leader, not willing to pass up a chance at some excitement. Big Belly Wu pointed to the station restaurant. ‘They've got stuffed buns,’ he said, ‘fritters, noodles with shredded pork and steamed bread. You choose. The loser pays, the winner eats free.’ The team leader looked again at my father: ‘Luo Tong, do you feel like taking him down a peg?’ ‘Fine with me,’ replied Father in a muffled voice, ‘but what if I lose? I don't have any money.’ ‘You won't lose,’ his team leader assured him, ‘but don't worry if you do. The money will come from the production team.’ ‘I'll do it then,’ my father said. ‘I haven't