Pow!

was so frightened that she squatted on the floor and cried like a baby. Lao Lan lay in bed hooked up to an IV drip filled with artery-cleaning serum. The blood of people like him who feast on rich, fatty food sticks to the artery walls like glue.

    Along with the municipalization of agricultural populations came the rise of rampant consumerism. A bowling alley had been built near the township headquarters. Lao Lan was a champion bowler, a master of strikes, despite his terrible form. He used a twelve-pound purple ball. Spurning an approach, he walked to the line, swung his arm and the ball, like a shell from a mortar, shot straight into the pins; they toppled over with cries of anguish. My twentieth shell landed on the bowling-alley lane. Smoke rose and shrapnel flew.

    Lao Lan emerged unscathed. Was the son of a bitch wearing a protective talisman?

    The twenty-first shell landed in the meatpacking plant's fresh-water well. Lao Lan was standing beside it gazing at the reflection of the moon, and I assumed he was musing over the story of the monkey that tried to scoop the moon out the water. I can't think of anything else he might have come out to see in the middle of the night. That well played a prominent role in my life, as you know, Wise Monk, so I won't go into that here. The moon was bright and pristine. When it fell into the well, the shell failed to explode but it did shatter the moon's pristine reflection and muddy the water.

    Despite the twenty-first shell's failure to kill Lao Lan, his poise and aplomb had deserted him. Sooner or later an earthen well jar will break—it's inevitable. One of these exploding shells has your name on it and the Western Heaven awaits your arrival. Resorting to trickery, Lao Lan put on a worker's clothes and tried to pass himself off as one of the night-shift men in the kill room. What looked like an attempt to become one with the masses was in fact a ploy to save his skin. He greeted the workers, even slapped some of them familiarly on the shoulder, producing smiles from those favoured by such an unexpected but welcome gesture. At the moment they were slaughtering camels, those ships of the desert, dispatched in great numbers because their hooves were sought after at formal banquets on the tables of Han and Manchu diners. Camel was the ‘in’ meat of the day, as a result of Lao Lan's success in buying off several nutrition experts and local reporters who then published a series of articles extolling the virtues of camel meat. There was a plentiful supply of the animals from Gansu and Inner Mongolia, although the finest were imported from the Middle East. By this time the kill rooms were semi-automated. The animals were transported by hoists from the meat-cleansing workshop into Kill Room No. 1, where they were first washed with cold water and then subjected to a steam bath. Their legs flailed wildly as they hung from the hoists. Lao Lan was standing under one of the suspended camels, listening to the workshop foreman Feng Tiehan, when I seized the moment and dropped the twenty-second shell into the tube. Trailing a live wire, it flew to its target, exploding on the roof and severing the steel cable supporting the unfortunate camel. It plunged to its death.

    The twenty-third shell entered the workshop through the hole opened by its predecessor and rolled on the killing floor like a giant spinning top. With no thought for his safety, Feng Tiehan threw himself at Lao Lan, knocking him to the floor and covering him with his body. POW! Blast waves and billowing gunpowder smoke swept through the workshop. Four hooves flew for a distance and then fell onto Feng's back, where they looked like frogs engaged in a serious discussion.

    Lao Lan crawled out from under Feng's body, wiped the steel splinters and camel blood off his face and sneezed. His clothes lay in tatters at his feet; all that remained on him was a leather belt. ‘Luo Xiaotong,’ he screamed, picking up a rag to cover his privates, ‘you little prick, what did I ever do to you?’

    You've never done anything to or for me. I took the twenty-fourth shell from the old man and dropped it down the tube. This would be my answer. Taking the same course as its two predecessors, it landed in the new crater. Lao Lan hit the ground and rolled over to take cover behind the camel carcass. The edge of the crater blocked splinters of shrapnel and saved him from injury. Some of the other men lay flat on the workshop floor but a