Pow!

blistering summer day, their unseasonal attire produces not a drop of sweat. Wise Monk, I've heard rumours of a fire dragon elixir that allows a person to bathe in a frozen river in the heart of winter. From the looks of it, there is perhaps also an ice-and-snow elixir that allows a person to stroll under the sun wearing a fur coat on one of the hottest days of summer.

    From East City comes a float shaped like a medicinal tablet with the words Di-a-Tab in the Song Dynasty calligraphic style, sponsored by Ankang Pharmaceutical Group. What surprises me is the absence of marchers for a company as famous as Ankang. Just a float, rolling down the street like a gigantic medicinal tablet. I know all about that so-called anti-indigestion remedy, which I'd encountered five years before, when I was wandering the streets of a well-known city and saw little flags with Di-a-Tab ads flapping in the wind from utility poles on both sides of the street. I also saw a Di-a-Tab ad on a huge LCD TV screen above the city square: a single Di-a-Tab is released into an enormous stomach stuffed to bursting with meat; it dissolves into a white mist that then emerges from the mouth. The accompanying text, bland beyond belief, read: ‘After eating a side of beef, with Di-a-Tab you get relief.’ The idiot who wrote that obviously knows nothing about meat. The relationship of meat to humans is very complex, and there are only a few people on this earth who understand it as well as I do. The way I see it, the creators of Di-a-Tab ought to be dragged over to the grassy knoll by the Wutong River Bridge—East City's old execution ground—and shot. After eating your fill of meat, you sit back quietly to enjoy the digestive process, a post-gustatory delight. But these idiots come along with Di-a-Tab, which just shows how low the human race has fallen. Am I right or am I not, Wise Monk?

POW! 19

    Finally, all the contingents of marchers are in their assigned spots on the grassy field and, for the moment, the highway in front of the temple looks deserted. A white utility van speeds in our direction from West City, turns off the highway when it reaches the temple and stops under a gingko tree. Three brawny men jump out. One is middle-aged and dressed in an old army uniform faded nearly white from too many launderings. Lively and spry despite his age, he is clearly a man of unusual abilities. I recognize him right away—Lao Lan's follower Huang Bao, a man who's had considerable dealings with our family and who yet remains a mystery, at least to me. The men take a large net out of the van and then spread it open. Then two of them, one on each end, begin walking towards the ostriches, and I know that the end is nigh. Huang Bao has obviously been sent on a mission for Lao Lan, and as such is playing the role of commander. The ignorant ostriches run straight towards the net, and the necks of three of them are immediately snagged by its holes. All the rest, flustered by the trap the others have stumbled into, turn and run, leaving the unfortunate three to struggle and complain hoarsely. After fetching a pair of garden shears from the van, Huang Bao goes up to the net, and—snip, snip, snip—separates the birds’ heads from their bodies at the thinnest part of the necks. The now-headless torsos perform a brief macabre dance before toppling over, spurts of dark blood gushing like a runaway hose from their truncated, python-like necks. The stink of blood seeps into the temple just as Huang Bao and his crew's mortal enemy arrives on the scene, a manifestation of the saying ‘Every evil man fears someone worse.’ Five stony-faced men in black emerge from somewhere behind the temple. The tallest among them, wearing sunglasses, a cigar dangling from his lips, is the mysterious Lan Daguan. As his four henchmen charge Huang Bao and his men, they draw rubber truncheons from their belts and, without a ‘by your leave’, begin cracking open heads. The sickening crunches and spurts of blood chill my heart. No matter what, Huang Bao has been counted as one of us, a fellow villager. I see him holding his head in pain. ‘Who are you?’ he shouts. ‘Who gave you orders to attack us ?’ Blood oozes from between his fingers. His attackers remain silent and simply raise their truncheons once more. Huanb Bao has lost this battle; stumbling over to the highway, he runs away, shouting: ‘Just wait, you guys…’ Now you may think none of this makes any sense but