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crawl. There were also two left on my father's tray. The end game had arrived. They ate their last fritters at the same time, after which Big Belly Wu stood up. But he sat right back down, weighed down by his body. The contest had ended in a draw. Suddenly my father said: ‘I can eat one more.’ The assistant manager turned to a waitress: ‘Hurry,’ he said excitedly, ‘this fellow says he can eat one more.’ The waitress fished one out of the oil with her chopsticks, looking jubilant. ‘Are you all right, Luo Tong?’ the team leader asked. ‘If not, just stop. We don't care about the little bit those fritters cost.’ Without a word, my father took the fritter from the waitress, tore it into little balls and put them into his mouth, one at a time. ‘I want another one, too,’ Big Belly called out. When the waitress handed it to him, he put it up to his mouth, ready to take a bite but unable to. Agony was written all over his face and tears ran from his eyes. He laid it back on the table and said feebly: ‘I lose…’ He tried to stand again, and did so for a moment before sitting down so heavily the chair groaned and squealed before collapsing under his weight.

    The contest over, Big Belly Wu was sent to the hospital, where he was opened up and the half-eaten fritters labouriously removed from his stomach. My father was not sent to the hospital, but he paced the riverbank all night long, stopping to bend over and vomit every few steps, leaving behind a partial fritter each time. A pack of half-starved dogs, eyes ravenously blue, followed him, eventually joined by dogs from neighbouring villages. They fought tooth and nail over my father's regurgitated fritters, from the top of the riverbank down to the river itself and back up. I didn't witness the events, of course, but they have created a vivid scene in my imagination. It was a frightful night, and my father was lucky the dogs didn't eat him too. If they had, I wouldn't be here. He never did describe to me what it felt like to throw up all those fritters. Whenever my curiosity got the better of me and I asked about his chilli and fritter contests, his face would redden. ‘Shut up!’ he'd snap. I'd obviously be touching a nerve, a very painful one. Though he never said so, I knew he'd suffered grievously over those fifty-nine chilli peppers and the three pounds of oil fritters. Back then, people added alum and alkaline to the flour along with sodium carbonate. The unrefined cottonseed oil they used was so black it was almost green, and highly viscous, like tar. And it was loaded with chemicals like gossypol, DDVP and benzine hexachloride, pesticides that do not easily break down. My father's throat must have felt like it had been scraped raw and his stomach must have bulged like a taut drumhead. Unable to bend over, he must have taken painfully slow steps, holding his belly tenderly with both hands, as if it might explode. He must have seen the flashing eyes of the dogs behind him, green like will-o'-the-wisps. I'll bet he thought that those dogs could hardly wait to rip open his belly to get at the fritters inside, and that thought led to another, that once they'd finished off all the fritters, they'd turn on him, starting with his internal organs, then his flesh and finally his bones.

    Given that history, Father frowned at my report to him and Lao Lan about the meat-eating contest between the three workers and me. ‘No,’ he said sternly. ‘Don't get involved in anything that shameless.’ ‘Shameless?’ I retorted. ‘How? Don't people tell the story of the pepper-eating contest between you and Lao Lan with admiration?’ Father banged his fist on the table. ‘We were poor,’ he said, ‘do you understand?’ ‘Poor!’ Lao Lan tried to cool the air: ‘It was more than that. You took the challenge to eat fritters because you loved the things, but the chilli-eating contest between you and me was for more than just a crummy pack of smokes.’ Lao Lan's words took the edge off of Father's anger. ‘There's nothing wrong with contests,’ he said, ‘except for eating contests. A person's stomach can only hold so much but the supply of good food is limitless. Even if you win, you're gambling with your health. However much you eat is how much you have to throw back up.’ That made Lao Lan laugh. ‘Lao Luo,’ he said, ‘don't get carried away. If Xiaotong thinks he's up to it, I don't see anything wrong in organizing a preview for the