Chapter 44: The New Farmstead (Part 1)

Since D-Day, the transmigrators’ diet had consisted of rice and seafood. After a month of eating seafood prepared in every conceivable way, few retained any appetite for it. Even Wu De’s once-lauded seafood paella had become unbearably monotonous. Though he later oversaw some improvements—smoked fish, fish sauce, and fish cakes—some of these required a long aging process, while others lacked essential seasonings. Everyone had remembered to bring salt, but soy sauce, sugar, vinegar, cooking wine, and spices had been deemed non-essential, items that could be produced, grown, or purchased after their arrival. They had forgotten that they had to eat every day.

The result was a culinary wasteland. The smoked fish and fish cakes were strange and unappetizing. The food service department would occasionally try to liven things up with canned goods from the reserves, but the quantities were too small. A can of luncheon meat, a sickening meal for two, was a mere morsel for ten.

One day, Wu Nanhai furtively gave Wu De a smoked sausage. In his old life, he wouldn’t have given it a second glance. Now, it was the most delicious thing he had ever tasted, even though it was seasoned only with garlic. Wu Nanhai made him swear to secrecy, especially from Nick. It was a horse meat sausage, made from the remains of “Blue Lightning.” The Australian racehorse had been secretly and corruptly consumed as the private property of the agricultural group. The grave that Nick visited from time to time was empty; even the bones had been collected to make fertilizer.

The few dead horses dragged back after the “First Encirclement”—as the counterattack had been dubbed by the “Lingao Express”—were their first real improvement in diet in over a month. And the six pigs sent by the local gentry were a rare delicacy.

But for Wu Nanhai and the others, there was a slight disappointment. The pigs were small and lean, with stiff bristles, more like wild boars than the plump, pink pigs of their own time.

“Don’t look down on them,” Xiong Buyou said, eyeing the piglets with a greedy glint in his eye. “These are Lingao pigs, a famous local specialty, always exported to Hong Kong. You know Lingao suckling pig? It’s this kind of pig. Thin skin, small bones, tender meat, and a special aroma.”

He cast a wolfish gaze over the piglets. “These are all thirteen or fourteen jin. Just the right age. They’ll be fat and tender when roasted.”

“Don’t get any funny ideas. I’m planning to raise the piglets as breeding stock. If this breed is as good as you say, we have to keep them.”

“Are all the big pigs slaughtered?”

“That’s right. A feast for everyone. The Executive Committee has already approved it.” Wu Nanhai looked at the pigs, rooting in the dirt, oblivious to their impending doom. “I originally wanted to kill two, but the Executive Committee said if we’re going to do it, we might as well do all six. Better for everyone to eat their fill than for each to get just a small piece.”

Wu Nanhai had a plan for every part of the pigs. The pork belly and ribs would be made into braised pork in soy sauce. The head meat would be braised. The pork chops and tenderloin would be stored in the refrigerator salvaged from the Fengcheng. The trotters and spareribs would be used for soup, the leg and shoulder meat for ground pork. The fat would be rendered into lard, the cracklings used for stir-frying. The bones would be used for soup. The brain and spinal cord were collected separately. The blood and offal were all delicacies. The inedible offal had other uses and was also frozen. Even the skin would be deep-fried into pork rinds. Wu Nanhai was determined to put an end to the complaints about the food, at least for a few days. The truly inedible parts were dried to make feed powder.

But there was a problem: no one knew how to slaughter a pig. To these transmigrators, a pig was just the red meat on a butcher’s block. How to turn a living, breathing animal into pork was a mystery.

Wu Nanhai sought out Yang Baogui. The veterinarian had successfully dissected and butchered several dead horses, so it was natural to assume he could handle a pig. But Yang Baogui shook his head. Taking a pig’s life was easy, he said, but slaughtering it was a skilled job. If done poorly, the meat would be ruined. He cited the example of the European Union, which, in the name of animal welfare, had switched to an electrocution method that, he claimed, had ruined the taste of pork.

In the end, the veterans from the military group solved the problem. Every company in the army raised pigs, and the mess squad would slaughter them for the New Year’s feast. A few of the veterans had helped out. They rolled up their sleeves, boiled a large pot of water, and in no time, all six pigs were slaughtered.

A quarantine team, composed of Yang Baogui and Shi Niaoren, inspected the carcasses and declared them healthy, with no serious parasitic infections, though they still advised that all meat be cooked thoroughly.

That night, several large pots of braised pork in soy sauce were cooked in the cafeteria. Seasoned only with salt, a poor-quality solid soy sauce, and cooking wine, it received unanimous praise. Even the girls who usually avoided meat joined the chorus of praise and complaints about the small portions. Wu Nanhai saw one man shed tears as he ate.

“Meat is still the best,” was the unanimous conclusion of the transmigrators who had eaten seafood for nearly two months.

But the feast had used up the last of their soy sauce. Wu Nanhai made a mental note to find a place to buy more.

As the industrial focus shifted to Bairen Beach, the Agriculture Committee also had to relocate. Wu Nanhai spent his days shuttling between the two sites, cleaning and transporting equipment. Though a member of the Executive Committee, he rarely used the Beijing 212, preferring to hitch a ride on the farm vehicles. The only things left at Bopu were the cafeteria and the fishery production group, now managed by Chen Haiyang, a former navy man. Chen Haiyang had submitted a proposal to the Executive Committee: to establish a navy with the fishery group’s ships and personnel, which would also engage in fishing and manage the Bopu camp and future maritime trade.

A navy! Wu Nanhai thought. We haven’t even solved the problem of eating, and someone is already thinking of building a navy. He watched as his tent, his home for over a month, was dismantled. He threw the nylon nets Wu De had given him onto a farm vehicle. Wu De, the fisherman, was now a labor reform captain, tormenting the natives. If he had stayed in the fishery group, would Chen Haiyang have come up with such a grand idea?

A long string of two-wheeled carts, abandoned by the village militia, was attached to the back of the farm vehicle, loaded with the Agriculture Committee’s belongings: small farm tools, irrigation equipment, sprayers, experimental equipment, veterinary instruments, seeds, and cages of chickens, ducks, and rabbits. The farm vehicle had been transformed into a makeshift train.

Yang Baogui, with a homemade whip, directed his six dogs, herding a newly formed marching formation: a few pigs, a pair of donkeys, and three horses. These large animals would march to their new home on foot, escorted by a contingent of seven or eight men from the military group.

“Old Yang, thank you for your hard work,” Wu Nanhai said, walking up to him. “Let’s go together.” Animal husbandry was not his specialty, and he wanted to take this opportunity to learn from the veterinarian.

“It’s a long way, about ten kilometers. Can your body handle it?” Yang Baogui asked, eyeing his slightly chubby frame.

“What are you talking about? I’m younger than you.” The man, with his dark skin and black-rimmed glasses, looked to be in his late thirties.

“I’m a rural veterinarian. Walking ten kilometers a day is nothing. Though there are roads to every village now, there’s always only one car, and it’s always being driven by someone who isn’t making a house call.” Yang Baogui shook his flat-top buzz cut. Wu Nanhai noticed that, like himself, he had tied the arms of his glasses with a string and hung them around his neck. This small, shared detail greatly increased his favorable impression of the man.