hog maw

one of my grandma’s favorite stories, if not her favorite story, to tell about my childhood is the time when, i don’t remember exactly how old i was but i was in that fraught period between being fully potty trained and going off diaper, & i pee’d my pants. and i puttered over to her room, for in those days she stayed with us every summer when i was out of school to take care of me at home—so i puttered over to her room and announced: 姥姥，我peepee在裤子里啦！i pee’d my pants!

she heard this as 姥姥，我屁屁在裤子里！which is to say, my ass is in my pants!

so she replied 那当然，你的屁屁不在裤子里在哪儿呢？
which is to say — duh, where else would your ass be if not in your pants?

it took us a lot of back and forth before she realized what i meant. it was like our own version of hu’s on first.

anyways, she brings this up within a couple hours of any conversation we have about our past, and every time she chortles so heartily tears begin leaking from the corners of her eyes.

for the first couple times, i laughed too. then for awhile, i just kind of scoffed along and rolled my eyes, half-embarrassed, half-bored. but after approximately a million retellings, it’s funny again, because now i hear it from her side.

sometimes, to reiterate the terrible metaphor, a dead horse can be beaten back to life! they don’t tell u about that part.

in the morning i arrive and announce my interest in seeing any materials to do with pigs. i also mention my invitation by the 档案馆长, which draws only looks of confusion. the sleepy woman at the front desk gives me the 县志, a sort of ‘historical guide to the city’ and says that’s all there would be. her colleague next to her agrees. overhearing her, a stout man in a black jacket sitting further off stands up, curses and slams cabinets for a few minutes, then stomps out. 神经病, she mutters. mental issues. he comes back with one old meeting pamphlet from 1941 that had one line about the uses of pigs. he points it out. i look at him, amazed that he found one source from 1941 that had one line about pigs in it when none were supposed to exist.

as the hour passed he brought me file after file. when the workers were taking off for lunch, he brusquely asked if I was going to eat. i asked is there a place around here I can eat? he says yes there’s a cafeteria, it’s cheap. I follow him there. we begin talking about his encounters with pigs in his youth. being from the countryside, pigs were everywhere. he said there was a peak in the 90’s, when household had at least two, and some had as many as seven. He tells me about picking 猪草 as a kid and cooking it. my PKU advisor 王老师, also from rural 湖南, has told me about this before. filling two big 框 and cooking it after school (on saturday!), sprinkling in 大麦 husks to sweeten the deal, because as it turns out, pigs don’t always like to eat their boiled veggies either. 

in line for lunch he apologizes for the southern cuisine, says he’s noticed my northerner’s accent. and…even though many of my colleagues and advisors have cautioned me against revealing my nationality, i can’t help it. i tell him i’m american. the man in front of him looks back at me in astonishment and more than a little suspicion. what are you doing here? he asks. I’m studying pigs, I reply. he makes a baffled face and turns back to the line. 

I confusedly misorder at the counter but the lady refuses to change what she put on my platter. I follow 孙 to a big tub, like a metal garbage bin filled with cooked rice, and spoon some onto my tin platter with a long-handled ladle. 孙 walks to a round table where his coworkers are seated, and sits down. I hover awkwardly. he gets up and moves to an inner seat. here, there’s a spot, he says. i sit down and quietly eat my lunch as everyone speaks a dialect I can’t understand. I guess it would be called “hunnanese.”

孙 stays after everyone else at the round table waiting for me to finish my lunch. the last woman to leave smiles at me as she walks away. you’d have to stay in a village for a couple months to really understand the traditional pig-raising culture, he says. you can just take a sack and walk through a village he says, with a chuckle. after lunch, he asks if I want to go on a walk through the park behind the government buildings. i hesitate. my mind wanders maniacally. is he trying to get me to a place where we can be alone? there’s enough people milling about for me to think someone would hear me scream, so i agree. instead, about half way through our walk, he makes a call to someone who used to work for the archives, asking if he could gift me a set of his books written about party history, which are sure to have something about pigs.

he asks me 我什么时候回国 and I say july, thinking he means to ask me when I would return to the US. but what he was asking was, when did I return to China, the country that I’m in now. there’s no past present or future tense in Chinese so the temporality of the phrase is utterly ambiguous, its meaning hinging solely on what country we consider me as “returning” to. I say oh. I’ve been back a week. i realize my americanness is still something he is trying to wrap his mind around.

when we get back to the archives reading room, he gives me another source, tells me I can take pictures. It’s the best one thus far, an account written from the central archives about the history of pigs in 宁乡. throughout, the most interesting bits cite “全宗” folders and files numbered into the hundreds. none of them show up in the citations given at the end of the booklet, which are all various encyclopedias and newspapers, even though 全宗 makes up for most of the citations. i ask about them. oh, every 单位 has a number, that’s the internal archives. you don’t have to at those, though. i don’t have to look at them? or i can’t? i ask. still looking very focusedly at the book, as if repeating what he had just said, he says, you can’t look at those. i pause and say, oh. okay. he steps away and looks at me. those sources include great structural changes, he says, at the broad societal level. as if it were obvious I would never be able to get my hands on them. you can just get a 片面的理解, a one-sided understanding from this, he says, like an offer.

i sit back down at the table, deflated. he brings me one more source, a huge thick book full of anonymous sayings and accounts of Mao’s visits to 宁乡 with no citations. he’s folded over a page containing some limerick about the ideals of pig. it goes like this: 

猪的理想

天上纷纷降饲料，地上屠夫都死掉，

人类全部信佛教，猪栏栅子都不要。

pig’s ideal

feedstuffs falling from the sky, all of earth’s butchers* die 

all of humanity believes in buddhism, and nobody wants a pigsty. 

*also a colloquialism for dictators

he leaves the office, as well as his coworker. i sit there for awhile, flipping again through what I was given. two people come in and show me their ID’s, asking me to look up files for them. twice I have to tell them i don’t work here. when he finally comes back, i let him know people came in. he says oh, i went to the bathroom. i say okay, well, I’m going to head out now. thanks for helping me so much today. he ignores my expression of gratitude. a well-worn chinese habit. he says, as i walk towards the door, do you need to see anything else? i ask, well, is there anything else? of course, there’s lots more, he retorts. I say well, then, yes. I’ll come back tomorrow. his face assumes a look of consternation. bring some sort of 单位证明, he says. a work unit affiliation. all day they haven’t even asked for my passport. they don’t know my name. okay, i say, and walk out into the misty afternoon.

1. the man fishing

the man fishing on the beach in dulan sitting in a chair stands up to put more worms on the hooks and they writhe on their little hooks and he casts the line out again. i think of that line about how when men go out to fish it’s not the fish they’re looking for. i think about men with their worms out in the water wriggling on a string, enjoying the fresh air.

2. the man looking for rocks

the man looking for rocks on the beach in dulan told me to put the dusty red ones i’d picked up down, because they weren’t rocks, they were bricks the ocean had rubbed into rounds, other people would laugh at me, and they would get my hands dirty. he had a pocket full of gray dusty looking rocks he’d picked up looking for some pattern or another. he wore a red stone on a ring, a stone he’d found on the beach and gotten a friend to polish and set. i don’t mind if people laugh at me, i insisted. but i picked up another rock that looked like petrified wood, and he was satisfied. later walking up the street i placed the two red brick-stones neatly on top of each other by the side of the road. laughing a bit at myself. i had found their color so mesmerizing scattered among the gray blue green stones glistening with ocean water under the sun. now on the concrete they just looked like regular old bricks again, in the shape of stones.

3. the man walking his dog talking to the ladies

sitting on a bench near the canal near my grandma’s apartment in beijing. two ladies neatly placed their newspapers lined with some shiny insulation on the next bench over and sat down. look over there, one said, how did he know we would be here? over walks a man with his little poodle, who goes around sniffing the ladies and pees on the trash can. the man stops the poodle from ever coming towards me. the women talk about how the other day they met two young men who each had dogs and decided to live the rest of their lives that way, traveling with each other and the dogs. today’s young people they said, half in awe, half in worry, i imagine — 他们不一样了. they’re not the same. women living with women and men living with men and none of them want children. the man says well, of course. raising a daughter is a bit not worth it, don’t you think. after she gets married she belongs to another household. takes care of her husband’s parents. it’s like you raised her for nothing. and let alone the taking care, what about 受别人气? taking the brunt of other people’s anger? in the city it’s okay but in the villages it’s still like that, he says. the women hem and haw uncommittedly. the dog sniffs around the rails. the man picks it up and pretends to throw him over the railing. the dog squirms, tail between legs, paws splayed. 别逗了! stop teasing! the women call out. the man laughs, ignoring them. look! he says. it knows to be scared. he lets it down, only to pick it up again and hold it over the railing again, over the water of the canal. stop it! stop it! the ladies scold.

as i walked from the fuzhou ancestral pepper cake shop to the 228 park i passed a rack of clothes. on it was a furry white vest that caught my eye. as i paused to look at it an old lady came over. try it on! she said. i hesitated. she took another one out, a brown one. i said fine and put down my bag and took off my coat. i put it on, she went to grab a mirror. it looks good she insisted, every time.

i’m sorry i don’t think i’ll wear this i said, putting the vest back on the hanging rack and backing away. she said wait!! she pulled out a brown hoodie with goofy and donald duck on it. i shook my head. wait!! wait!! she pulled out a blue and brown bomber/rain jacket. only you can wear this, she said. plenty of people want it but they need bigger sizes. only you can wear this. look at them, she said, gesturing to the people passing by. they’re too fat. only you can wear this. i only want 390. 390! that’s less than an umbrella and u can wear this in the rain. please you’re my first customer. i’ve read two newspapers out here today, not a single person has stopped.

i took off my thin tweed coat and put the double layered jacket on. it did look good.

350, she said. i’ll give it to you for 350. i’ll be happy just to break even. this is all money, she said, gesturing at her table full of thin elephant print pants, scarves, granny jackets, vests. you think i can afford all this? you could help me not go home with empty pockets. i’ve got five grandsons.

i made a sympathetic face.

taiwan is dying, she said. 40 years ago you should have seen the business! i had customers lining up! now…nothing.

why is the economy so bad? i asked.

i don’t dare say, she said. but 台湾要死了.

of course i bought the jacket. put it on! she said. i said it’s too warm. she put it in a bag. thank you she said, bowing. thank you, thank you, thank you. i echoed her repeatedly, awkwardly, walking away.

later that day i watched the city of sadness in a movie theater. it’s a beautiful movie about the beginning of the white terror in taiwan. it’s very sad. almost all the young men are killed. it was getting chilly out as i waited for my bus back home so i took off my coat and put the jacket on. it kept me warm.

guys with girlfriends start leaving before the end of the show in a drove of twos. one repeatedly does the “round up” gesture: pale index finger pointed upwards traces a flat circle, sending a chill down my spine. he pauses the gesture to hug a brown friend only to pull away and repeat the gesture again.

i am jostled rudely by a tall white man-boy holding a water bottle in the air walking backwards. a small parade of short brown guys and gals are pushing him as a pathbreaker across the crowd. that’s one strategy, i huff disapprovingly to myself.

in front of the girls bathroom. we wait in a slowly moving line patiently talking to each other. when my friend walks in she gestures to the line behind her. “there’s a bunch open over here!” she exclaims. the ladies exclaim and the whole line bustles in.

an asian woman with a kind round face pulls up in a prius. our uber driver. she’s not wearing a mask. as we pull away i notice her unsteady driving, and her difficulty interpreting the blue line of google maps on her phone screen. she drives with one set of wheels bumping over the reflectors of the left lane line. a buddha dangles from the rearview mirror. on the lit blue dashboard in large letters: MAINTENANCE REQUIRED.

a rather significant addendum to my last post is: throughout the four-day process of moving out of my apartment, driving and getting towed to ames, and attending iowa swine day, i suspected i might have covid-19. i suspect it to this day.

the day before the day before my scheduled trip to ames, i was struck by a mysterious bone-aching fatigue that rendered me bedridden. i took a covid test, which came out negative. around that time, my neighbor-advisor, with whom i’d recently had a dinner party, emailed me telling me he’d just tested positive for covid. i had only one day left to move a gargantuan amount of shit, so all day i napped and prayed for recovery the next morning.

i woke up the next day with a light ache in my throat but with my energy mostly recovered. i took another covid test. it came out negative again. i spent the next two days packing and moving like a person possessed. as previously mentioned, i did not even come close to finishing and ended up relying on the seemingly bottomless carrying capacity of my special person and the stupendously generous support of my friends. meanwhile, trying to focus in the iowa state archives, i had an occasional cough and some baseline tiredness that was easy to blame on all the moving and traveling. but when i woke up on friday, the day after iowa swine day, a week after my first bout, i was sick again with a body ache and fatigue that lasted through the weekend.

i did not take another covid test. i reasoned — even if i had it, i wasn’t going to see anyone for the next four days. i reasoned — i only had two tests left and i ought to save them for a time when i was worried about exposing others again. the ache was gone after a few days filled with seasons one and two of stranger things. as i re-entered the archives the following week, i reasoned — even if i had had covid, it was probably gone by now. i reasoned — even if i was asymptomatic, it was okay for me to be in the mostly empty room masked up. i reasoned — any one of these maskless people could be asymptomatic too, what’s one more risk. i reasoned and reasoned, but really, at that point, i just didn’t want to know. all i know is, the cough lasted for two more weeks, and the test i took upon my return to chicago also came out negative.

at iowa swine day, no one wore a mask.

no, nobody, despite the hourlong presentations on “african swine flu,” despite the fact that it was a conference of scientists, despite the fact that everyone universally vaccinated their pigs and preemptively fed them antibiotics, no, surely, their belief in science could not be questioned, and yet, and yet, nobody, not a single person wore a mask.

not even me.

(sorry, ma)

my singular goal in wanting to attend this conference was to make some of these scientist friends, and i have sacrificed a lot to be able to do so. like getting towed 240 miles and putting the grueling work of moving out of a well-loved apartment onto the unsuspecting backs of my hyde park friends and earning the angsty resentment of my dearest of roommates, as they angrily asked if i had to leave in the final days of moving, and did i really expect them to clean up after me.

of course, i did not leave them to clean up on their own. but i was not there, and refused to return even upon blowing the rim of my car wheel because i had to get to iowa swine day and make some scientist friends to begin my year of research. this is an annual event, folks. and i have one research year.

and i quickly recognized the midwestern state of affairs as my tow truck driver hacked noisily into the crook of his elbow between sips of red bull working his 12 hour a day 5 days a week towing shifts. he drives party buses and does lawn work on the two days in between. as we discovered pretty early on our economy doesn’t work without sick people — i mean — “essential workers” showing up at their jobs, in higher rates than ever, so “fuck you, and fuck us” [ronnie chieng — speakeasy].

so, i’m in the sauce. besides i would rather get covid than ruin my chances of being considered an insider to this party. and for that i must wear this mask of no mask, this mask of transparency, this mask of i have nothing to hide, no danger to pass on, no elderly to protect, no children to shield, this dangerous and deathly invisibly smiling mask of american freedom.

recently i began telling random strangers that i would like to learn how to box and i quite promptly found myself a few willing boxing coaches.

the first was wax, a trucker stopping by the lake for a break before his next 15 hour shift. he began shadowboxing in the middle of our conversation, so i asked him to teach me something. it’s all about footwork, he said, pivoting around a bad foot with the leg that had been crushed by a forklift in 2016. you gotta keep your head level. when you got your head up, that’s when, the body, the body is getting hit. he simulated getting punched in the ribs, his body twisting and jerking from the action of invisible fists.

the best protection is good preparation, he said. i quipped something wry about how the best protection was ignorance. he looked at me in confusion. no, when the government tells you that you can have concealed carry in a certain place? that’s protection. that’s them telling you to protect yourself. you ought to make use of that.

i had no response. the atmosphere grew suddenly heavy and confused. hey where’d you go? he asked. you went off somewhere, come back. i could not.

the second was kevin. a young father who got into mma during his time in the military and saw my session with wax. stopped by after and offered to train me. we met at the point a week later.

right off the bat, he says: ok so i’m not going to teach you how to box. i’m going to teach you how to fight. to defend yourself.

okay, i said

because someone comes and attacks you, you go into fight or flight. right? and if you can, definitely run. but if you can’t, the best defense is to attack. us shorter people, we have the advantage if we get up close.

after simulating various assaults on the nose, the chest, and the groin, i informed him that i did not actually foresee myself relying on such tactics were i actually in physical danger. i boasted that i’d feign ignorance, try to seduce them or be seduced, and make my escape when their defenses were all the way down.

what i didn’t say was my skepticism to his claim that i’d go into fight or flight upon being threatened in the first place. maybe this is particular to women, or to circles where exposure to random or explicit violence is less common — where violence is more ‘socialized,’ so to speak. but there’s often a much more tantalizing third option upon experiencing/witnessing violation: pretending it’s not happening. the benefit of this approach is that one is more likely to survive the encounter. the cost is a mute (self-)hatred that seeks its own accumulation. not a head shot but a body punch.

walking to the bus stop today i passed a mother with a child on her shoulders holding an umbrella walking beneath the underpass and i thought: how nice

a moment later outside the underpass the wind had blown the umbrella inside out and the mother was struggling to right it and it kept brushing the child’s head as she held it unsteadily buffeted and he silently threw his arms up trying to shield himself but she was none the wiser and as i passed them he began wailing, desperate and angry in the way a delayed call mourns its own lateness: “mama! mama!” and i thought: he is calling for a different mother, a mother who protects perfectly, not this beast of burden beneath him carrying him out into the open and failing to shield him from the wind

and in my readings for class today various scholars described how women in japan and china in the 17th and 18th centuries were tasked with a daily practice of moral rectitude and were blamed for falling prey to passion should they miscarry or birth a sickly child — and men worried that if a woman could abort or kill a child (“returning” the infant, it was called), they could kill their husband or fathers as well–

so it was a woman’s duty to take care of herself because a woman is never only taking care of herself, as it were

and an ig story let me know that the supreme court leaked a drafted opinion overturning roe v. wade

and my dentist told me my teeth needed to be ‘scaled,’ deep-cleaned at a price of $50 per quadrant, and a mouth has four, after giving me the most haphazard of ‘normal’ cleanings, though he has repeatedly told me his daughter is my age, and of course i need another year and a half of retainers and braces

anyways i decided not to believe him and left without scheduling another appointment

though i had spent just as much earlier today removing the dust shields from the front wheels of my car, they’d been hissing and clanging in a most worrying fashion though it turns out it wasn’t critical after all

meanwhile i know from brushing and biting that my crooked tartared teeth will last me a bit longer — long enough to ignore for now.

the weather and the people are feeling inordinately warm, as the ice quickens its thaw.

last time i was here a chubby brown-skinned girl exclaimed, as i walked past: you’re so sweet ‘n pretty!

this time a white man walking a huskie waved as i entered the tunnel

and coming up the other side upon the tree’d hill an elderly lady smiled at me round the crux of her cane

and i clambered over the two concrete blocks demarcating the grassy path to the beach

and onto the wide concrete steppes on the other side and onto the rocks jumbled out into the lake, the Point curving up along my left

and sat there awhile, mimicking the squat seagull in front of me who squawked in a much more accessible register than his crew screeching as they circled in the skies

and as i picked my way over the rocks back to shore i saw a red-headed woman urging her nervous dog over the jagged edges from which i walked

and i walked past a white jacketed figure whose face was hid behind a curtain of brown curly hair and whose back curved inwards around what i assume was a smartphone

and walked past a brown boy, shoes beside him, toes digging in warm sand, my own feet swaddled in winter socks stuffed in summer sneakers

and walked past a girl in pink with lavender hair who didn’t look up

and a boy and a girl who scooted slightly on her picnic blanket, abashed at blocking a bit of my path with their good time

walked up to n round the point of the point off of the rocks atop the flat concrete on the other side

came upon a trio finishing their fishing — asked about their technique which involved a long string of lines shot from a repurposed fire extinguisher– they called it “powerlining”

and a man later known to me as paul asked if i wanted to see their fish

“it’s a bounty out here,” he said as he hauled up his black net and at first all i saw were four pbr’s then i saw it

a “brown trout” that was more of a gray-silver fish with brown-black speckles and catfishlike rectangular mouth + gills

and the elderly man wearing a white sox jacket + bears hat behind him said — ‘i’m the one who caught it’

and i came closer to see as he pulled off worms and put them squirming on the concrete wave-breaker blocks and he said they were “nightcrawlers”

and said he’d teach me to fish and that i could also buy some “reefer”

then i came upon the part of the point that four days ago had been blockaded by ice and found i could just squeeze past it

and felt very special as i walked onto the other side

very special as i crouched in an ice cavern to pee with an unbroken view of the city skyline, briefly joining the rhythm of melting ice droplets drumming on the lakewater beneath me

very special as i clambered over the ledge of the edge and back into the park

the easian boy on the rocky step with his face to the sun did not open his eyes as i stepped by him

and the elderly man i gave a smile to on my way out smiled back and briefly searched my face, wondering how i knew him