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secret societies, and ordinary peasants have no way of laying hands on their formulas. It's probably some strange concoction we could never track down.’

    My eyes travelled down to the old fellow's bleary-eyed dogs. ‘Did you get that bunch drunk?’

    ‘Two jin of liquor and four steamed buns,’ he replied. ‘Liquor these days has lost its punch.’

    Jiaojiao was squatting in front of the dogs, prodding their oily lips with a reed stem, occasionally revealing a white fang. Their breath reeked of alcohol. From time to time one would roll its eyes and make dreamy sounds.

    A man pushed a scale on squeaky wheels over to the dog pens from the warehouse, the hook swaying back and forth. For the sake of convenience, we'd built a pen exclusively for dogs near the one that held sheep and pigs. What made that necessary was an incident involving a worker who'd entered the pen holding all the animals together to pick out one of the pigs, and had been badly bitten by dogs turned half mad from being penned up too long. He was still in the hospital receiving daily shots of anti-rabies vaccine—vaccine that had already expired, according to someone from the hospital who spoke in confidence. Whether or not he'd begin to show symptoms was an open question. Naturally, the fact that a worker had been bitten wasn't the only reason we'd invested in the construction of a separate dog pen. Another was that dogs that had been plied with liquor were capable of wreaking havoc once they sobered up, attacking the sheep and pig penmates. Peace was rare in the pen, day or night. One day, after planning the production schedule, I took Jiaojiao over to see what was going on in the pen. Nothing, as it turned out, one of those rare peaceful moments. We saw dozens of dogs, some standing, others sprawled on the ground, forcibly occupying most of the space in the pen and forcing the pigs to huddle in one corner—some white, some black, some spotted—and sheep—along with a few billy goats and a couple of milch goats—in another. There was hardly any space between the pigs, who faced the railing, thus leaving their rumps vulnerable. The sheep too were clustered together, with some long-horned billy goats standing protectively. Almost none of the animals were injury-free, thanks, of course, to the dogs. Despite the peaceful moment—a rest for the dogs—the pigs and the sheep were preparing for the worst. Even when the dogs were relaxed, internal flare-ups were inevitable, including semi-serious fights between the males and the occasional cluster-fuck. At those times the pigs and sheep were so quiet that they hardly seemed to exist. But then a sort of gang fight broke out among several dozen dogs, which sent fur flying and blood spraying and resulted in some serious injuries, including a few broken legs. This was no longer a game. Jiaojiao and I wondered what the pigs and sheep must have been thinking as battles raged among the dogs. She said they weren't thinking about anything, that they were taking advantage of the dogfights to catch up on lost sleep. I would have challenged her on that, but I looked into the pen and, just as she'd said, the animals were sprawled on the ground, their eyes shut as they dozed. But dogfights were a rarity. Most of the time, the dogs, sporting sinister grins, launched attacks on the sheep and pigs. At first, the larger boars and billy goats bravely fought them off. The goats reared up on their hind legs, heads high, and charged, but the dogs nimbly sidestepped the attacks. ‘I thought you said that meat dogs are stupid animals,’ some might ask. ‘Then how could they be as alert as wolves in a forest?’ Yes, they entered the pens as stupid animals but, after being starved for a week, their wild nature returned accompanied by a surge in intelligence. They reverted to being predators, and, not surprisingly, the sheep and pigs penned up with them became their prey. After the first assault failed, the billy goats prepared for a second, rearing up as before, raising their heads and aiming their horns at the prowling dogs. But their movements were stiff, their tactics predictable and once again they were easily sidestepped by the dogs. They then steeled themselves for a third attempt, but it was a weak one, so weak that the dogs barely had to move to get out of the way. By now, all the fight had left the goats. The dogs, grinning hideously, charged their ovine prey and sank their fangs into sheep tails, sheep