In Szechwan, meat meant pork. Everybody raised pigs. Mrs. Chiang’s family had nine or ten, “big black ones that lived in three small huts in back of our house. They were raised for market; when they got to be three or four hundred pounds, my father would sell them. The buyers would come to our house and haggle for hours, and then they would all troop off to the nearest market to verify the price. But we always saved one pig for ourselves. My father would butcher it just before New Year’s, and then my mother would have to rush to make a whole year’s supply of sausages, hams, and salted meats before the holiday feasting began.”
