Pow! (42 page)

When the rest of the workers heard about the meat-eating contest, the day-shifters stayed back and the night-shifters showed up early. A crowd of more than a hundred filled the yard outside the kitchen to see the spectacle unfold…At this point in my narrative, I need to stop and talk about something else. Back in the day of street-corner storytellers, this is what they called ‘one plant, double stems, two flowers, focusing on one first’.

During a rest period back in the commune era, when the villagers combined their labour, two individuals took part in a chilli-pepper-eating contest. The winner was to receive a pack of cigarettes, donated by the production team leader. The competitors were my father and Lao Lan. Both were fifteen or sixteen at the time—no longer boys, not yet men. The peppers chosen for the contest were no run-of-the-mill variety but of a special type known as goat horns. Each contestant was given forty long, thick, purple peppers, just one of which was capable of reducing most men to crying for their mothers. The team leader's pack of cigarettes would not be easily won. Not knowing
what my father and Lao Lan looked like back then, I've had to rely on my imagination. They were friends but they were also rivals, each trying to outdo the other at activities like wrestling, usually without a clear winner or loser. It does not take much imagination to conjure up a picture of two men eating forty peppers each; on the other hand, it's a scene impossible to describe. Forty goat horn peppers create a substantial pile, tipping the scales at two pounds at least. No clear winner emerged after the first round of twenty, nor after the second. The judge, their production team leader, observing how red the combatants’ faces had grown, fearfully called it a draw and offered each a pack of cigarettes. They would have none of that. So, on to the third round, with twenty more peppers. When they were halfway through the seventeenth pepper, Lao Lan tossed it along with his last two to the ground and conceded defeat. Almost immediately he bent over, his arms wrapped round his stomach, his face covered with sweat, and spewed out a stream of green—some said purple—liquid. My father finished his eighteenth pepper but, before he could bite into the nineteenth, blood began to seep out of his nostrils. The production leader sent a member of his team to buy two packs of the most expensive cigarettes. That contest became one of the village's most significant events of the commune era, and no talk of an eating competition ever ended without its mention. A few years later, a fritter-eating contest was held at the station restaurant between one of the porters—a man so well known for his appetite that he was nicknamed Big Belly Wu—and my father, then eighteen. Father was delivering beets to the station with other members of his team. Big Belly Wu was strutting up and down the platform, patting his belly and daring one of them to take him up on his challenge. Disgusted by the man's behaviour, the team leader asked what the challenge entailed. ‘Eating!’ Wu replied. ‘I can out-eat anyone!’ ‘That's a boast I don't think you can back up,’ laughed the team leader. ‘That's Big Belly Wu!’ someone sidled up to him and whispered. ‘This is his hangout, and this is how he gets free meals. He can eat so much at one sitting that he doesn't have to eat again for three days.’ The team leader glanced at my father and gave another little laugh. ‘My friend, there's always a better man and a higher heaven.’ ‘I'm ready to find out if you are,’ grinned Wu. ‘What are you eating?’ asked the team leader, not willing to pass up a chance at some excitement. Big Belly Wu pointed to the station restaurant. ‘They've got stuffed buns,’ he said, ‘fritters, noodles with
shredded pork and steamed bread. You choose. The loser pays, the winner eats free.’ The team leader looked again at my father: ‘Luo Tong, do you feel like taking him down a peg?’ ‘Fine with me,’ replied Father in a muffled voice, ‘but what if I lose? I don't have any money.’ ‘You won't lose,’ his team leader assured him, ‘but don't worry if you do. The money will come from the production team.’ ‘I'll do it then,’ my father said. ‘I haven't eaten a fritter for a very long time.’ ‘All right,’ Wu said, ‘fritters it is.’ The crowd noisily made its way over to the restaurant. Wu took my father's hand and led him in, to all appearances a friendly gesture between old friends. Truth be known, he was afraid that Father would back out. A shout of ‘Big Belly Wu's back!’ from a waitress greeted them as they entered. ‘What's on today's contest menu, Big Belly?’ ‘Who are you to call me Big Belly?’ Wu complained. ‘You should be calling me Grandpa.’ ‘Hah! And you can call me Aunty!’ The other employees rushed over to watch as soon as they heard that Big Belly Wu was putting on another eating contest. The few diners looked on wide-eyed. The assistant manager walked up, wiping his hands on his apron: ‘Wu, what'll it be this time?’ After a quick glance at my father, Wu said: ‘Fritters. We'll start with three pounds apiece. How's that, young fellow?’ ‘Fine with me,’ my father muttered. ‘I'll match you pound for pound.’ ‘That's pretty big talk from a pipsqueak like you,’ retorted Wu. ‘I've hung round this station for more than a decade and defeated at least a hundred challengers.’ ‘Well, you've met your match today,’ said the team leader. ‘This young fellow's polished off a hundred eggs at one sitting, then topped it off with a whole hen. Three pounds of fritters won't make a dent in his appetite, isn't that so, Luo Tong?’ ‘We'll see,’ my father said, keeping his head down. ‘I'm not one to brag.’ ‘Good!’ Big Belly said excitedly. ‘Bring out the fritters, girls, straight out of the oil.’ ‘Not so fast, Wu,’ said the assistant manager. ‘You'll have to pay up front.’ ‘Talk to them, said Wu, pointing at the team leader, ‘since they're going to have to come up with the money sooner or later.’ ‘Says who, Big Brother? We can afford to pay for six pounds of fritters, three each, but there's that saying: “Eating a pile of shit is no big deal, except for the taste.” How can you be so sure we're going to lose?’ Wu wiggled his thumb in the team leader's face: ‘All right, maybe I've been a little rude and have offended you. How's this: we'll each take out enough for six pounds of fritters and lay it on the counter. The winner can pick his share and walk out, the loser can walk out but leave his share behind.
Does that sound fair?’ The team leader thought it over for a moment: ‘Yes, it's fair. But our villagers are pretty gruff people who don't mince their words, so don't make a scene.’ Wu fished out some greasy notes and laid them on the counter. The team leader did the same. Then a waitress covered the stacks with upside-down bowls to keep them from flying away. ‘Can we start, ladies and gentlemen?’ Wu asked. The assistant manager turned to the waitresses. ‘Go on, bring out the fritters for Master Wu and this fellow, three pounds apiece, and let the yardarm stick up a bit.’ ‘You scoundrels always shortchange your diners,’ laughed Wu, ‘but for a contest you want the yardarm to stick up a bit. I want you all to know that anyone who comes here either to throw down or to accept a challenge is no pushover. As the saying goes: “You don't swallow a sickle unless you've got a curved stomach.” If it's an eating contest, what difference does it make if the yardarm is up or down. Isn't that right, young fellow?’ My father ignored him. While Wu was holding forth, waitresses carried out a pair of enamel trays piled high with oil fritters and laid them on the table. Obviously fresh, they were big and fluffy, fragrant and steaming hot. ‘Can I start?’ my father asked the team leader politely. Before the team leader could give the OK, Wu had picked up one of the fritters and bitten off half. With bulging cheeks and moist eyes, he stared at the tray, his hunger clearly raging. My father sat down. ‘If you'll excuse me,’ he said to the team leader and the villagers, ‘then I'll start.’ With an apologetic look at the spectators, he began to eat at an easy, steady pace, taking ten bites to finish a foot-long fritter and chewing slowly before swallowing. Not Wu, who was not so much eating the things as stuffing them down a hole. The piles shrank. By the time five remained on Wu's tray and eight on my father's, each swallow took longer and caused greater distress. That they were suffering was obvious. Then there were only two left on Wu's tray, and the pace had slowed to a 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 meat-eating contests.’ My father calmly stood his ground. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I can't allow it. You have no idea how it felt.’ My mother's anxieties arose out of a different concern: ‘Xiaotong,’ she said, ‘you're a growing boy, and your stomach is no match for those young men. It wouldn't be a fair fight.’ ‘Well, since your parents don't want you to do it,’ Lao Lan said, ‘then forget it. I couldn't bear it if something happened.’ But I refused to back down. ‘You don't understand me, none of you. I have a special relationship with meat and a special ability to process it in my digestive system.’ ‘I agree,’ Lao Lan said, ‘you're a meat-boy but it's too risky. You need to realize that you're our hope for the future. We're counting on you to implement many innovations for United.’ ‘Dieh, Niang, Uncle Lan,’ I said, ‘I know what I'm doing, you don't have to worry. First, take my word for it, they can't win. Second, I'm not about to gamble with my health. Actually, I'm worried about them and suggest that we get them to sign waivers so we're not responsible for any consequences.’ ‘That's something we can do if you insist on going through with this contest,’ Lao Lan said, ‘but I want a guarantee that you'll be in no danger.’ ‘I can't say this about everything,’ I said reassuringly, ‘but I have absolute confidence in my digestive system. Do you have any idea how much meat I put away every morning in the plant kitchen? Go ask Huang Biao.’ Lao Lan turned to my parents: ‘Lao Luo, Yang Yuzhen, why don't we let him go ahead? My worthy nephew's capacity for meat is the stuff of legend,
and we know that his reputation is based on eating and not boasting. We can take the precaution of having a doctor sent over from the hospital to deal with any emergency.’ ‘Not for my sake,’ I said, ‘but it's a good idea to have one on hand for the safety of my rivals.’ ‘Xiaotong,’ my father said sternly, ‘in the eyes of your mother and me you're no longer a child, so you're responsible for your actions.’ ‘Dieh,’ I said with a laugh, ‘what are you so worried about? What are we talking about here?—a meal. I eat every day—I'll just eat a little more for the contest. And I may not even have to. If they throw in the towel early, it's possible I'll end up eating less than usual.’