Reborn to Strive

   The three butchers killed three pigs.

    Three pigs worth of blood was a lot; the people who wanted to coagulate the blood had prepared a barrel of water previously, added salt, and, after the pigs’ blood was poured in, they stirred continuously . . . until finally the mixture had congealed. After it was cooked, it could be sliced into blocks like tofu. 

    Generally, when preparing the blood of a single pig, they used a cauldron, and it would make plenty for a single family, so Guan Guangguo’s family only kept the blood of one pig.

   The blood from the remaining two pigs was divided among the neighboring households.

   After the pigs were slaughtered, they needed to be shaved, and the organs needed to be dealt with. The three butchers were busy splitting the work and assisting each other.

   Shi Zhen chatted with the butcher he’d bought from twice previously.

   Shi Zhen was handsome, but his clothing was shabby, and he had a deep tan from sun exposure. He looked exactly like a simple and honest village youth. In any case, he made a good impression on people, and it was easy for him to strike up a conversation.

   The butcher was thirty years old, and surnamed Zhu. He was really fond of Shi Zhen, and didn’t mind engaging in small talk with him.

   Nowadays, only a small portion of people were prosperous, but later, everyone would be worried about saving face when they were broke. Butcher Zhu sold meat in the town. Some families had no money, and bought meat on credit. In fact, when they didn’t have the money, they had no choice but to buy the cheapest meat, but made up a reason, such as saying they were buying meat for their dog to eat . . . but this youth in front of him had straight up told him that he didn’t have money, and this rare show of honesty left him with a deep impression.

    “Zhu Dage, do you always slaughter pigs in the evening and sell them the next day? Can I go with you and learn?” Shi Zhen asked.

    Selling vegetables honestly made little profit, but selling meat . . . ought to make more.

    He remembered that when he wandered around the market, there were a lot of people buying meat, but not many people selling it. Altogether there were only around ten butchers, and among them, several had bad attitudes when dealing with customers.

    This ought to be a remnant of historical issues — previously, the town butchers were all part of the local work unit, and if their treatment of customers was subpar, people would still come to buy because they had no other choice.

    Later, the butchers union dissolved, and while those people still sold meat . . . their attitude hadn’t improved.

    In the future, the population would grow and grow. Shi Zhen believed that it would be a long time before a supermarket or similar would be built in the town, so selling meat was a very good business.

    Naturally, he wasn’t going to sell meat forever, but he came out from his hamlet to make his way in the world, and it wasn’t just for the sake of himself alone . . . in his past life, he had come up with ways to bring lots of villagers out of the mountain, and this time he wanted to do the same.

    Even if he wasn’t a butcher in the future, he could pass along the business to the villagers.

    “Learn to butcher pigs? Even if you learn, you can’t sell,” Butcher Zhu started to laugh, “Even though we slaughter pigs, we have to do it secretly. Normally, in order to sell pork, you have to get it from the slaughterhouse. Not only are the booths at the vegetable market difficult to get because there are so few, they cost several thousand yuan.”

   Hearing Butcher Zhu speak of the slaughterhouse, the people around chimed in.

   According to regulations, meat sold in town couldn’t be home slaughtered, because people would skip out on the relevant tax — at the moment, there was a ¥5 tax per hog, plus a ¥5 slaughter fee.

   Butcher Zhu and the others came out to slaughter pigs precisely for the purpose of avoiding the slaughter tax. In that way each hog could earn more than ¥10.

   “If not for needing money to build a house, I wouldn’t go to the trouble of slaughtering pigs. I’d definitely avoid this livelihood.” Butcher Zhu heaved a sigh.

   He talked about various topics. For example, slaughterhouse pigs had a stamp on their body made from food grade ink, but their pigs from outside the slaughterhouse did not, so when he took these pigs to town to sell, he had to do so very carefully. Otherwise, if discovered, he’d have to pay a fine.

   Besides the butchers buying the unofficially slaughtered pork for the same price as the slaughterhouse pork, there were other reasons the villagers preferred for them to slaughter the pigs, rather than taking them to the slaughterhouse. Firstly, they could get the pig blood, and secondly when the villagers took their pigs to the slaughterhouse, they had no way of knowing how much the final weight of the animal would be. [They’re compensated per pound.]

   “When selling pigs to the slaughterhouse, sometimes they write down the weight of the pig a few jin less than what they actually give us,” Butcher Zhu began to laugh, “Then they turn around and come to our vendor stall, and pick up the extra meat.”

   Today’s slaughterhouse personnel were all from the previous butchers union factory, so messy situations like this were the norm.

   Shi Zhen recalled that when he had bought the pig’s tail, that person had come by Butcher Zhu’s booth, and Butcher Zhu had handed him a cut of meat without saying anything.

   Butcher Zhu probably also felt gloomy, speaking about the messy affairs of the slaughterhouse. For example, the slaughterhouse slaughtered a good many pigs daily, and though on the face of it, the pork meat was fairly distributed, in actuality there were discrepancies. Pigs came in all different sizes, and their viscera were of varying weights. In the end, whoever had better connections got the heavier viscera, while the others were given lighter weight parts.

   Tripe, liver, heart, etc. were not cheap, and the difference between the profit on the viscera of a 200 jin hog vs a 100 jin hog was not a trivial amount of money! Unfortunately, the weight of the pig carcass didn’t include the internal organs, and the weight of the internal organs were not counted when distributing the meat.

   The more Shi Zhen spoke with Butcher Zhu, the more they got along, and as they chatted he was able to clearly understand all the prices of pork.

   I suppose being a butcher is a no go, but . . . Shi Zhen asked, “Pig’s head is only fifty cents a jin?”

   Butcher Zhu replied, “With the tongue and ears already removed it’s fifty cents a jin.”

   At the year’s end, the price of pig’s head was particularly expensive, because the locals liked to buy a pig’s head to offer sacrifice to the ancestors, but normally pig’s head was very cheap. As for why it was so cheap . . . pig’s head contained many bones and little meat. After buying it for fifty cents a jin and taking it home to slice up, there were countless bony bits to deal with.

   A pig’s head was quite large and difficult to carry, and the average family wouldn’t buy it when they wanted to eat pork.

   After watching the slaughter, Shi Zhen went home to sleep. Of course, he didn’t forget to tell the neighbors that he wanted a bit of the pig’s blood. 

   The matter of him and Guan Baiyu was known by all the villagers at this point, and everyone was full of curiosity about him, but there was no malice, and they didn’t mind dividing up a bit of the pig’s blood for him.

   Early the morning of the next day, Shi Zhen went to town to buy a block of tofu. He intended to cook pig’s blood and tofu soup that evening. Additionally, he wanted to buy cinnamon bark, bay leaves, and other spices. 

   He planned to save money for a few days, buy a pig’s head and stew it. Then, taking advantage of the weekend, he’d go to town and try his hand at selling zhutourou. [Sliced headcheese]

   On the weekend, kids were off from school, and the townspeople were willing to buy snacks for them to eat.

   Besides . . . there were nearly no cooked food vendors in town at this time, so there ought to be no problems selling zhutourou.

   Most importantly, if it couldn’t be sold, it wouldn’t be a big loss, and he could still eat it himself.

   As far as him needing to go dredge the river silt . . . on the weekend he could have Guan Baiyu sell it.

   Of course, he would have to discuss it with Guan Baiyu.

   Shi Zhen was confident in his plan, and intended to talk it over with Guan Baiyu and Shi Xinghuo that evening.

   In the end, when he returned home that evening, he was met with some bad news — the guy who Shi Xinghuo had been digging clay for wasn’t going to continue selling clay.

   The clay he’d been selling to the cement factory couldn’t just be dug willy nilly. Even if he was selling clay from his own family’s land, he still couldn’t dig a giant pit in their land. 

   In fact, the village didn’t permit selling clay, but most of the time they turned a blind eye to it — potholding was not allowed, but digging from an exposed slope wasn’t a problem.

   So that person couldn’t continue to sell clay.

   If he couldn’t sell clay, he didn’t need to hire Shi Xinghuo. So, Shi Xinghuo was temporarily unemployed.

   Shi Zhen thought for a moment, then proposed, “Ge, come with me tomorrow to my work site. I’ll give you my job.”

   He made up his mind. Tomorrow he would start selling zhutourou. 

   Shi Xinghuo was capable of dredging the river silt, so he’d let him continue that job. Then his time would be freed up to start a small business.

   Previously, he could only take on unskilled labor jobs. The business of  selling zhutourou and similar things required the use of at least one large cookpot, and in order to buy the pig’s head you needed money, but he had none to start with.

   Now, he could cook at Guan Baiyu’s and then go out to sell.