I am not going to post a video of butchering pigs. Yesterday I had an experience that will always stick out in my memory. I was at a friend’s house for dinner and the matriarch of the household, very old (older than me), was watching a video on her cell phone. She was laughing hysterically. This is Ms. Wang’s mother for those of you who know the Wang family. They are charming people.  I have often come to dinner for authentic Guizhou food, very good food.

So I happened to call Ms. Wang about suppertime and she immediately invited me to dinner with her family.  I was quite hungry and I was nearby the Zhongtian Gardens, where Ms. Wang’s mother lives. I was quite hungry and dinner was about ready. Ms. Want’s mother was looking at her cell phone and laughing, a lot.  She brought the phone over to show me and it was a frantic pig, a bloody pig, bleeding from a cut throat and running all over the room. I was somewhat horrified. I kind of agree with this PETA group that wants us to be kind to animals. So I was laughing too, but not at the hurt pigs, at the elderly lady who was enjoying the video so much.  She kept pushing the video in front of me to watch more. I did.

I was very hungry when I showed up for dinner, and I recovered from the trauma enough to have a fine Guizhou dinner, but it really showed me the culture difference.  Perhaps every older Chinese who lived on a farm once has seen the pig butchered. They have also seen their share of screw ups. I like to watch the dog videos where dogs tip the canoe over or push somebody into the swimming pool etc. Funny. Well this was a compilation of pig slaughters gone bad. The common them was they had the pig indoors ready to butcher, and they cut the pig’s throat. Somehow the cut wasn’t clean and  the pig got away. So this was a compilation of pig slaughters gone bad and people were getting knocked all over the room, covered in pig blood.  Trying to catch and kill an angry bloody pig isn’t so easy.

It usually took several men to catch the pig. A bloody pig seems about the same as a greased pig. After catching it they had to cut his throat and with the pig struggling, it took several slashes and stabs. The bloody pigs were eventually caught and killed but every video had all the people in the room covered in blood, room full of blood, and an angry pig. If you are accustomed to seeing pig blood because you have slaughtered pigs before, the video seems quite funny. My laughter was very nervous because that the old lady was having so much fun watching it. Also, I was on the verge of spoiling my dinner. I just mark it down to a cultural difference, but I won’t soon forget it. Funny.