after visiting the company office headquarters, we drove over to the technology exhibit — basically, a small museum showcasing muyuan’s custom-made in-house technologies. the exhibit included models showcasing the company’s cutting-edge air filtration system which filtered pathogens out of incoming air and odorants out of exiting air, temperature-sensing cameras that toured the premises (a must when 60 to 70 workers took care of the 100,000 pigs in every building), pig-cough sensing microphones to catch the sneaky night-coughs (yc mentioned how once when she spent a couple months caring for pigs she had to pick the coughing ones out and they would always stop coughing when she neared them), shit-shovelers built like miniature tanks, QR-code activated pressure-based shot dispensers built like air guns, and a display of the three large UFO-shaped public conference centers the company was scheduled to build in the nanyang CBD to function as spaces for research offices and conventions. as we left, yc said they held up to 8 tours a day. i asked if the company sold its technology to other pig farms. yc said she hadn’t heard of any such thing. 小高 the driver said yes, most certainly, but the results were rarely as good since the technology was custom-made for muyuan’s own systems, which were unique.
muyuan is singular amongst large pig farms in the degree to which it owns and operates its own production and processing facilities, from r&d and breeding and feed processing through every step of the growing and fattening process, and soon to slaughtering and storage itself. it was this element that made possible the company’s exponential growth during the african swine flu crisis of 2018 and the covid-19 crisis of 2019, both of which are still ongoing, reaping the benefits of their superior biosecurity and skyrocketing pork prices nation-wide.
next we drove the 40 minutes to neighboring 内乡, where the company began, and where muyuan’s meat industrial complex was built. on the drive over, yy, a breeding expert, told me meat-type pigs lived for about 6 months, and boars and mothering sows for about 3 years. she told me boars have a strange flavor unless castrated early, because the testosterone changes the flavor of the meat. she told me about how white pigs (they mostly used landrace and yorkshires, with a little duroc in them) grew faster than other types, which is how they came to dominate the market. i asked about the common opinion i often heard, especially amongst chinese pig-eaters, that black pigs tasted better. she said it was possible they just tasted better because they took a little more time to grow and accumulate flavor.
as we arrived, we drove past the scaffolding of a large building that would soon operate as a slaughterhouse and cold storage unit and pulled onto a concrete slab surrounded by flat one-story buildings. we were greeted by two women in suits. (everyone was in suits, despite the sweltering heat). the small building housed a miniature of the pig farm grounds and 7 to 10 VR goggles that showcased 360 degree live recordings of the insides of various floors within the pig farm. this, coupled with the impressively light whiff of pigs we got when we parked a few hundred meters from one of the six-floor pig buildings, was the closest i got to meeting muyuan’s pigs. “ah, that’s that pig smell,” yc said. “it just gives me a sense of stability.” indeed, the smell was musty but not that unpleasant. having learned to love the smell of stinky tofu and durian over the course of my life, i could imagine becoming attached to it. to enter the actual pig farms, one had to quarantine, shower in and shower out. even yy the breeding expert had never entered any of the buildings. apparently, the buildings feature willy-wonka style elevators that go horizontally as well as up and down, to facilitate pig-moving between floors.
in lieu of a tour of the buildings we went for a drive around the “farm” grounds, which consisted of 21 six-floor buildings, each containing 100,000 pigs, with every three-building row accompanied by a villa-style dormitory for the “farm” workers who lived on site. then we drove to their old company office area for a decadent lunch with impressively restrained portions featuring black vinegar short-ribs, two types of henan-specialty noodles, a mind-bogglingly delicious egg-yolk based 小白菜 dish, and a salad made of hydroponic “queen” lettuce (水培沙拉女皇生菜) patented by israeli agribusiness OrganiTech. muyuan enforces an strict empty-plate rule on their employees, who are fined for leaving food on the plate. a sign on the table exhorted eaters to clean their plate, and i commented on how strong muyuan’s values seemed to be. “everyone needs to believe in something,” yy said serenely. yc was too busy to eat or converse for most of lunch, having just received some email that required her to compile a schedule for a company event happening in late june. she sat in the place of honor across from the door hammering away on her laptop. as we got ready to leave she shoveled the rest of the queen lettuce into her mouth and took the remaining two baozi to go.
we took a little loop around the man-made lake in front of the restaurant, where apparently there were once turtles sunning themselves on the banks and crayfish and lilypads flourishing within the waters. now the water had receded, exposing much of the bare concrete basin of the lake, but yy still saw one lone crayfish nestled in the mud amongst the dried lily stalks.
everyone but 小高 and i fell asleep on the way back to company headquarters.
hog maw 