Shifu, You'll Do Anything For a Laugh

were red as hot coals, the fur on their necks was standing straight up, like porcupine quills, and their razor-sharp fangs were bared. I turned to Father. “Hurry, the dogs are coming.”
    He stood up, waved the knife above his head, and charged the wild dogs like a madman, driving them back about half the distance an arrow flies. Then he ran back, breathless, and said loudly, “Second Master, if I don't cut you open, the dogs will do it with their teeth. I think you'd rather it be me than them.”
    Father's jaw set, his eyes bulged. With a sense of determination, he brought his hand down; the knife cut into Ma Kuisan's chest with a slurping sound, all the way to the hilt. He jerked the knife to the side, releasing a stream of blackish blood, but the rib cage stopped his motion. “I lost my head,” he said as he pulled the knife out, wiped the blade on Ma Kuisan's leather coat, gripped the handle tightly, and opened Ma Kuisan's chest.
    I heard a gurgling noise and watched the knife slice through the fatty tissue beneath the skin and release the squirming, yellowish intestines into the opening, like a snake, like a mass of eels; there was a hot, fetid smell.
    Fishing out the intestines by the handful, Father looked like a very agitated man: he pulled and he tugged; he cursed and he swore; and finally, he ran out of intestines, leaving Ma Kuisan with a hollow abdomen.
    “What are you looking for, Father?” I recall asking him anxiously.
    “The gall bladder. Where the hell is his gall bladder?”
    Father cut through the diaphragm and fished around until he had his hand around the heart — still nice and red. Then he dug out the lungs. Finally, alongside the liver, he discovered the egg-sized gall bladder. Very carefully, he separated it from the liver with the tip of his knife, then held it in the palm of his hand to examine it. The thing was moist and slippery and, in the sunlight, had a sheen. Sort of like a piece of fine purple jade.
    Father handed me the gall bladder. “Hold this carefully while I take out Luan Fengshan's gall bladder.”
    This time, Father performed like an experienced surgeon: deft, quick, exact. First he cut away the hemp cord that was all Luan Fengshan could afford for a belt. Then he opened the front of his ragged coat and held the scrawny, bony chest still with his foot as he made four or five swift cuts. After that, he cleared away all the obstructions, stuck in his hand, and, as if it were the pit of an apricot, removed Luan's gall bladder.
    “Let's get out of here,” Father said.
    We ran up the riverbank, where the dogs were fighting over the coils of intestines. Only a trace of red remained on the edges of the sun; its blinding rays fell on all exposed objects, large and small.
    Grandma had advanced cataracts, according to Luo Dashan, the miracle worker. The source of her illness was heat rising from her three visceral cavities. The cure would have to be something very cold and very bitter. The physician lifted up the hem of his floor-length coat and was heading out the door when Father begged him to prescribe something.
    “Hmm, prescribe something. .. .” Miracle worker Luo told Father to get a pig's gall bladder and have his mother take the squeezings, which should clear her eyes a little.
    “How about a goat's gall bladder?” Father asked.
    “Goats are fine,” the physician said, “so are bears. Now if you could get your hands on a human gall bladder… ha, ha… . Well, I wouldn't be surprised if your mother's eyesight returned to normal.”
    Father squeezed the liquid from Ma Kuisan's and Luan Fengshan's gall bladders into a green tea bowl, which he offered up to Grandma in both hands. She raised it to her lips and touched the liquid with the tip of her tongue. “Gouzi's daddy,” she said, “this gall is awfully bitter. Where'd it come from?”
    Father replied, “It's gall from a ma [horse] and a luan”
    “A ma and a luan , you say? I know what a ma is, but what's a luan?”
    Unable to stop myself, I blurted out, “Grandma, it's human gall, it's from Ma Kuisan and Luan Fengshan. Daddy scooped out their bladders!”
    With a shriek, Grandma fell backward onto the brick bed, dead as a stone.

Love Story
    T HAT AUTUMN THE TEAM LEADER SENT FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD JUNIOR and sixty-five-year-old Guo Three out into the fields to man the waterwheel. Why? To wheel water. For what? To irrigate the cabbage crop. A “sent-down” city girl named He Li-ping, in her mid-twenties,