them out.
“Brothers,” I said to them from a high spot of ground, “rebel!”
They just stared at me blankly, having no idea what I was saying, all but one skinny immature sow – an unspoiled body with a black-and-white belly – who emerged from the crowd and said, “I’ll follow you, my king.” The rest of them just rooted around in their pens looking for something to eat. A few walked back inside to lie down lazily and wait to be fed by the humans.
So with the little sow behind me, I headed southeast on ground so soft our legs sank in up to the knees. We left a clear trail. When we reached the bank of the deep, water-filled canal, I asked her:
“What’s your name?”
“They call me Little Flower, my king.”
“Why do they call you that?”
“Because there are two little floral patterns on my belly, my king.”
“Did you come here from Mount Yimeng, Little Flower?”
“No, my king.”
“Then where did you come from?”
“I don’t know, my king.”
“You’re the only one who came with me. Why?”
“I worship you, my king.”
As I looked this simple little animal over, naive Little Flower, I was both moved and saddened. I nudged her belly with my snout as a sign of friendship.
“All right, Little Flower,” I said, “humans no longer have any control over us, just like our ancestors. We’re free. But starting today, we’ll dine on the wind and drink the dew. It will be a hard life, and it’s not too late for you to change your mind.”
“I’m not going to change my mind, my king,” she said decisively.
“That’s wonderful news, Little Flower. Can you swim?”
“Yes, my king, I can.”
“Great!” I patted her on the rump and jumped into the water.
The water was warm and gentle, and it felt wonderful to be immersed in it. I’d originally planned to swim to the opposite bank and walk from there, but I changed my mind. At first the surface of the water looked frozen in place, but once we were in it I realized that it flowed northward, toward the great canal once used by the Manchu government to transport grain, at a speed of at least five yards a minute. The speed of flow and our buoyancy would make our passage an effortless one. By barely kicking with my front legs, I sailed through the water like a shark, and when I turned to look, there was Little Flower, right behind me, all four legs churning in the water, head high, eyes flashing; she was breathing through her nose.
“How’re you doing, Little Flower?”
“I’m doing fine, my king.” But with that brief bit of conversation her nose dipped beneath the surface, which led to snorts and a spurt of frantic leg kicks.
I lifted her up until she was nearly out of the water. “You’ll be fine,” I said. “We pigs are born swimmers. The key is not to panic. I’ve decided to stay off the roads and travel by water. That way we won’t leave a trail for those disgusting humans. Can you hold out?”
“Yes…” She was gasping slightly.
“Good. Here, why don’t you climb onto my back?” She refused, preferring to tough it out. So I dove underwater, and when I floated up to the surface I had her perched on my back. “Hold tight,” I said. “Don’t let go no matter what.”
With Little Flower on my back, I floated down the canal past the Apricot Garden Pig Farm and on to the grand canal, heading east amid billowing waves. A fiery sunset put on a beautiful show in the western sky with mutating cloud formations – a green dragon, a white tiger, a lion, a wild dog – with rays of sunlight filling the gaps between clouds and lighting up the surface of the water.
Waves chased us; we chased waves; waves chased one another. Great canal, where did you get such power? You carry with you mud, corn, sorghum, potato vines, even uprooted trees, on your eastward journey You also deposit dead pigs in your tree-lined shallows, where they swell up, rot, and give off foul odors. When I saw them I was more convinced than ever that by drifting downstream with Little Flower I’d transcended the life of pigs, transcended the Red Death, even transcended the now-ended Mao Zedong era.
I know that in his “Tales of Pig-Raising,” Mo Yan had this to say about the pig carcasses that had been thrown into the river: “A thousand dead pigs from the Apricot Garden Pig Farm formed a corps of floating dead. Their carcasses swelled up, began to rot, exploded, were eaten by maggots, were torn apart by fish, all the while drifting downstream until they disappeared into the roiling waters of the Eastern Sea, where what was left of them was swallowed up, dismembered, and turned into all sorts of materials to join the transforming cycle of material objects.” I’m not going to say the guy can’t write, only that he missed a wonderful opportunity, for if he’d seen me, Pig Sixteen, with Little Flower on my back, riding waves in the golden waters of the river, instead of writing about death, he’d have praised life, praised us, praised me! I am the power of life, I am passion, freedom, and love, the most beautiful spectacle the world has to offer.
We drifted with the flow toward that moon of the lunar eighth month, sixteenth day, a much different moon than the one under which you were married. The moon that night had fallen from the sky, but this night it rose out of the river, just as big and round as the other one, red at first, like an innocent child sent to earth from some hidden spot in the universe, bawling and bleeding and turning the water red. Your moon, sweet and melancholic, came down for your wedding. My moon, solemn and bleak, rose up for Mao Zedong. We saw him sitting on the moon – his bulk pressing down and altering its shape into an oval. He wore a red flag like a cape, held a cigarette in his fingers, and raised his heavy head slightly. A pensive look was frozen on his face.
With Little Flower on my back, I drifted eastward, chasing the moon and chasing Mao Zedong. We wanted to get closer to the moon so we could see Mao Zedong’s face with even greater clarity. But the moon moved with us, the distance remaining constant no matter how hard I paddled, even as I moved through the water like a torpedo. Little Flower dug her hooves into my ribs and shouted “Faster! Faster!” as if I were her horse.
Where Northeast Gaomi Township and Pingdu County met, a sandbar called the Wu Family Sandy Mouth divided the river, sending one stream northeast, the other southeast; the two streams merging again near Two County Hamlet. Now picture this scene. A fast-moving river suddenly divides into two, and at this juncture, schools of red carp, white eels, black-capped soft-shelled turtles, fly up to the moon, an expression of romanticism; but before they reach their goal, the pull of gravity brings them back in a bright and lovely, but ultimately tragic arc, for when most of them land on the surface of the water, scales fly, fins snap off, and gills shatter, turning the returned water creatures into meals for waiting foxes and wild boars. A small number manage to return to the safety of the water by virtue of their strength or by pure luck, and continue swimming to the southeast or the northeast.
Now, given my body weight and the fact that I was carrying Little Flower on my back, although I too went skyward at that juncture, I started falling back before I was ten feet out of the water, and it was only the springy nature of the scrub brush that kept either of us from injury. We were, of course, too large for the foxes to consider eating; and to the wild boars, with their well-developed front halves and tapered rear ends, we had to be considered relatives; they would never eat their own kin. We landed safely on the sandbar.
Food came easily to those foxes and wild boars, good, nutritious food, and they were all much rounder than they should have been. All foxes eat fish, that’s a rule of nature. But when we saw a dozen or so wild boars dining on fish, we could hardly believe our eyes. They’d grown so picky, their mouths so pampered, that they ate only the brains and the roe; the fat, rich meat held no attraction for them.
Astounded to find us there, the wild boars slowly gathered round, mean looks in their eyes, moonlight glinting off their terrifying white fangs. Little Flower wrapped her legs around me even tighter, and I could feel that she was quaking. I started backing up, backing up, not giving these brutes the chance to fan out and surround us. I counted them, there were nine altogether, male and female, all weighing at least two hundred
