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What I suffered from most during those days was neither hunger nor loneliness but embarrassment, a result of my failed attempt to wreak vengeance. It simply could not continue; I had to break the hold of this emotion and find a way to make Lao Lan suffer. Killing him was no longer possible, nor was it absolutely necessary. If I managed to stick a knife in him and end his life, we'd wind up suffering a similar fate. There must be better way. But what? Then it came to me—the perfect plan.

At noon on one fine autumn day Jiaojiao and I strode into the plant with our dagger and scissors. No one tried to stop us. We were met by Huang Biao. When we asked him about Lao Lan, he nodded in the direction of the banquet hall. ‘Hey, brave boy,’ he called out as we walked towards the hall.

Lao Lan and the new plant manager, Yao Qi, were entertaining clients and feasting on delicacies such as donkey lips, cow anuses, camel tongues and horse testicles—everything that sounded terrible but tasted divine. We were greeted by the pungent odours of their meal. Neither Jiaojiao nor I had tasted meat in a long time, and the sight of that loaded table made us drool. But we were on a mission and would not be distracted. Lao Lan spotted us when we stepped into the room. The infectious smile on his face was immediately replaced by a frown. At his discreet signal, Yao Qi stood up to greet us: ‘Ah, it's you, Xiaotong, Jiaojiao. The food is in another room. Come with me.’

‘They are the orphaned children of two former workers,’ Lao Lan explained to his guests softly. ‘The plant is responsible for their welfare.’

‘Out of my way!’ I pushed Yao Qi aside and approached Lao Lan. ‘Don't be afraid, Lao Lan,’ I said. ‘You don't have to break into a sweat or get tied up in knots. We're not here to kill you—we're here to let you do the killing.’ I turned the dagger round in my hand, Jiaojiao did the same with her scissors, and we offered them, handles first, to Lao Lan. ‘Go ahead, Lao Lan,’ I said. ‘We've lived long enough, more than long enough, so come on, kill us!’

‘If you don't,’ Jiaojiao added, ‘you're a cowardly son of a bitch!’

The blood rushed to his face. ‘What kind of a joke is this?’

‘It's no joke. We're here to ask you to kill us.’

‘Children,’ he said with an unhappy smile, ‘You are the victims of a huge misunderstanding. You're too young to truly understand what happens with adults. I'll bet some evil person has put you up to this. You'll understand some day, so I won't try to explain things to you now. If you hate me so much, you can kill me any time you please. I'll be waiting.’

‘Kill you? Why would we want to do that? And we don't hate you. We just have no desire to go on living and would like to die at your hands. Please, do it for us.’

‘I'm a son of a bitch, a real son of a bitch. How's that?’

‘Not good enough,’ Jiaojiao insisted. ‘You have to kill us.’

‘Xiaotong, Jiaojiao, be good children and give up this charade. I feel terrible about what happened to your parents, just terrible. I have no peace of mind. And I've been thinking about your future. Listen to me. If it's a job you want, I'll take care of it, and if you'd rather go to school, I'll take care of that too. What do you say?’

‘Dying is the only thing we want. You have to do it today.’

‘Where'd you get these two?’ one of the clients, a fat man, laughed. ‘I'm impressed.’

‘They're a couple of whiz kids,’ answered Lao Lan with a smile. Then he turned back to us. ‘Xiaotong, Jiaojiao, go get something to eat—have Huang Biao give you the best meat we've got. I'm busy right now but I'll make sure we find a way to deal with this problem.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don't care how busy you are, this'll only take a minute. Two quick stabs is all you'll need. Once we're dead, you can go on with what you're doing. We won't take much of your time. If you don't finish us off now, we'll keep pestering you for as long as it takes.’

‘You really are a pain, you foolish children!’ Lao Lan said gruffly, clearly upset. ‘Huang Biao, take them out of here!’

Huang Biao came up and grabbed me by the neck with one hand and Jiaojiao with the other. We did not put up a fight as he dragged us out of the room. But the second he let go, back we'd run, weapons in hand, begging for Lao Lan to kill us.

Our prestige soared, like fireworks lighting up the sky, and we took advantage of that by seeking out Lao Lan every day. And when we found him we begged him to kill us. When he stationed guards at the gate, we sat outside, waiting for a glimpse of his car. Then we'd run over to it, kneel before it, raise our weapons over our heads and beg him to kill us. Eventually, he stopped leaving the compound, so we stood outside the gate and shouted: ‘Lao Lan, oh, Lao Lan, come out and kill us—Lao Lan, oh, Lao Lan, do us a favour and kill us—’

When we were alone we sat there quietly, but when there were people about we stood up and began to shout. Passers-by came up to ask what we
were doing. ‘Lao Lan, oh, Lao Lan,’ we'd respond, shouting even louder, ‘come kill us—we beg you—’

We knew it wouldn't take long for news to reach half way round the county, and it didn't. Actually, it was more like half way round the province, or even the country, because Huachang's customers came from far and wide.

One day Lao Lan disguised himself as an old man and tried to leave the plant in an old Jeep. Jiaojiao and I detected his peculiar odour long before he reached the gate. We blocked the Jeep, then dragged him out and crammed our dagger and scissors into his hand. ‘An unlanced boil,’ he said, scowling at us, ‘will cause trouble sooner or later.’

He placed his right foot on the Jeep's running board, rolled up his trouser leg, took aim with the dagger and embedded it in his calf. Then he placed his left foot on the running board, rolled up his trouser leg, took aim with the rusty scissors and embedded them in his other calf. Then he stepped down, held up both trouser legs above the wounds and their embedded weapons and circled the gate area twice, leaving a trail of blood on the ground. Then he stepped onto the running board with his right foot, plucked out the dagger—releasing a spurt of dark-red blood—and threw it at my feet. Next he stepped up with his left foot, plucked out the scissors—releasing a spurt of blue blood—and threw it at Jiaojiao's feet. ‘Let's see what you're made of, you little punk,’ he said with a look of contempt in my direction. ‘Do what I just did if you've got the guts.’

I knew at once that we'd suffered another crushing defeat. The bastard had backed us into a corner once again. I understood that all Jiaojiao and I had to do was stab ourselves in the same way to defeat Lao Lan so resoundingly he'd have to kill himself to salvage his shredded dignity. But stabbing myself in the calf would have hurt like hell! Confucius said: ‘Your body is a gift from your parents, and keeping it from harm is the first rule of filiality.’ Stabbing ourselves would be an affront to Confucius and an admission that we were unfilial. All I could think to say was: ‘What the hell was that for, Lao Lan? Do you think you can scare us off with some hooligan trick? We're not afraid of dying. But we're not going to stab ourselves—that's what we're asking you to do. You can pare off all the meat on your calf but it won't change a thing. If it's peace of mind you're looking for, the only way to get that is to kill us.’

We picked up the bloodstained dagger and scissors and handed them back to him. He snatched the dagger out of my hand and flung it as far as he could. It flew across the street and landed who knows where. Then he snatched the scissors out of Jiaojiao's hand and did the same.

‘Luo Xiaotong, Luo Jiaojiao,’ he howled, almost in tears, ‘Enough of this preposterous nonsense. What do you want of me?’

‘That's simple,’ Jiaojiao and I said together. ‘We've lived long enough and we want you to kill us.’

He climbed into the Jeep, bloody legs and all, and drove off.

There's a well-known phrase that goes: Give the man a taste of his own medicine.
Do you know who said that, Wise Monk?
Neither do I. But Lao Lan knew, because he drew on that wisdom to find a way out of his dilemma. After he drove off, we scoured the area with a horseshoe-shaped magnet borrowed from Li Guangtong at the township TV repair shop and managed to retrieve the knife and scissors, so we could continue trying to get him to kill us. At noon, three days after that incdent, we were sitting outside the plant gate shouting at a wedding procession when a short fellow with a bulbous nose and a prominent beer belly hobbled up to us with a butcher knife. A mean-looking bully of a man.

‘Recognize me?’ he asked grinning deviously.

‘You're…’

‘Wan Xiaojiang, the guy you beat in the meat-eating contest.’

‘You've gotten fat!’

‘Luo Xiaotong, Luo Jiaojiao, like you, I've lived long enough, more than enough. Another minute will be too long, so I'm asking the two of you to kill me. You can do it with your dagger or that pair of scissors, or you can use this butcher knife. I don't care one way or the other, it's up to you. Just do it.’

‘Get lost,’ I said. ‘We've got no beef with you, why would we want to kill you?’

‘That's right,’ he said, ‘you've got no beef with me but I still want you to kill me.’ When he tried to force his knife into my hand, both Jiaojiao and I backed away. But he was relentless—he kept coming at us, moving a lot quicker than we'd have guessed, given his bulk. He was like the offspring of
a cat and a mouse. We had no idea what you'd call something like that but we couldn't shake him no matter how hard we tried.

‘Are you going to kill me or aren't you?’

‘No.’

‘All right, then, if you won't do it, I'll do it myself—slowly.’ He turned the butcher knife on himself and sliced a deep gash in his belly, which immediately began to ooze yellow fat and then blood.

Jiaojiao threw up at the sight.

‘Are you going to kill me or aren't you?’

‘No.’

He stabbed himself a second time.

We turned and ran but he followed us relentlessly. Knife raised high and blood streaming from his belly, he came after us, shouting over and over: ‘Kill me—kill me—Luo Xiaotong, Luo Jiaojiao, do a good deed by killing me—’

The next morning, we'd barely shown up at the Huachang gate when he ran up on his stubby legs, knife in hand, and opened his shirt to show us his wounds. ‘Kill me—kill me—Luo Xiaotong, Luo Jiaojiao, kill me—’

We ran off, but even from far away we could hear his cries.

Back home, before we even caught our breath, a man in dark glasses rode up on a motorcycle with a green sidecar and stopped at our gate. Wan Xiaojiang climbed out of the sidecar and staggered into our yard, still holding his knife, still showing us his wounds, still shouting: ‘Kill me—kill me—’

We slammed the door shut; shouting, he attacked it with his substantial buttocks. His voice, which cut like a knife, sounded like it could slice through glass. We covered our ears with our hands but to no avail. The door was starting to give way, the hinges pulling free. A moment later it fell apart with a crash and the splintering of glass. Wan burst into the room: ‘Kill me—kill me—’

Jiaojiao and I slipped under his armpits and ran as fast as we could. But when we reached the street the motorcycle was following us, as were Wan Xiaojiang's shouts.

We ran out of the village and into the overgrown fields, but the rider—the man must have been a motorcross racer—rode straight into the waist-high grass and across the water-filled ditches, startling clusters of
strange-looking hybrid animals out of their dens. As for Wan Xiaojiang, his unnerving shouts never stopped swirling round us.

That's what did it, Wise Monk.
We left home and began living a rootless life, all to get away from that rotten Wan Xiaojiang. Three months later, we returned, and the minute we walked in the door of our home we discovered that we'd been cleaned out by thieves. No TV, no VCR, the cabinets thrown open, the drawers pulled out, even the pot was gone. All that was left were two stovetop frames, like a pair of ugly, toothless, gaping mouths. Fortunately, my mortar still rested in a side room under its dusty cover.

We sat in the doorway and watched the people on the street, both of us sobbing, high one moment, low the next. The neighbours brought jars, baskets, even plastic bags, all filled with meat, fragrant, lovely meat, and laid them at our feet. No one said a word. They just watched us, and we knew they wanted us to eat the meat they'd brought. All right, kind people, we'll eat it, we will.

We ate it.

Ate it.

Ate.

We ate so much we couldn't stand; we looked down at our bulging bellies and then crawled inside on our hands and knees. Jiaojiao said she was thirsty. So was I. But there was no water in the house. We looked round till we found a bucket under the eaves, half filled with foul water, perhaps rainwater from that autumn. Dead insects floated on the surface but we drank it anyway.

Yes, that's how it was, Wise Monk.

When the sun came up, my sister was dead.

At first I didn't realize it. I heard the meat screaming in her stomach and saw that her face had turned blue. Then I saw the lice crawling out of her hair and I knew she was dead. ‘Baby sister,’ I cried out, but I'd barely got the words out when chunks of undigested meat spilt from my mouth.