Day One as a Chinese Butcher Apprentice

I’ve got pork to sell and meat to chop. Today is the first day of my apprenticeship as a Chinese butcher. Last week I visited an open air market in Beijing, not too far from the Bird’s Nest. Open-air markets are a phenomena that seem to occur in just about every developing country in the world, and they provide constant fascination for me and other foreigners who wish to see life in motion during their time abroad. I love these places. You can almost feel the pulse of the entire city when you go to an open-air market in China…it’s as if you’re touching an artery near the skin. Everything is happening at once: women haggling over the price of carrots and potatoes, a man getting his haircut in some obscure corner, a cook slapping pulled dough down on the cutting board with a thunderous clap, Tibetan travelers selling their medicine made of unknown animal parts, outdoor dentists pulling teeth. This is where life happens. This is where the people are. This is where one has the opportunity to get his hands a little dirty.

When I came here last week I picked two butchers to talk with for some time. In between sales, they mentioned that they were from Jiangxi Province, an area in the South of China where I had spent 2 years. I’m always happy to meet another friend from Jiangxi. I asked them if it would be okay if I could come back at a later time and chop meet with them, using their butcher’s knives. They seemed curious as to why. I just said, “I’ve never done it before.” The answer seemed good enough for them. I said I would be back on the 8^th, early in the morning. I stick to my appointments, especially with butchers.

As I walk up to the 2 butchers, they immediately welcome me and offer me a handshake with ungloved hands. Then they tell me the different prices of the pork parts. They’ve got everything there: kidneys, livers, feet, heads, ears, hearts, etc., all at different prices, all going fast. I try to remember it all, but it’s impossible for me to get all the prices right on the first go around. Next to them is another woman from Hebei who is pulverizing a pile of ground pork over and over with two large butcher knives. The pork rests in a huge pile, sitting on top of a tree stump. She minces it ever so finely, beating the pork down with her blades as if she is beating a drum. She’s all sunshine and smiles.

The couple from Jiangxi are especially busy today, so I don’t want to get in the way. I just do the basic, A level butchery stuff, i.e. cutting the pieces of meat into more sizeable and sellable portions. Cutting the pig’s feet is a little more dangerous. First I have to cut a slit between the toes of the hoof. Then I insert the blade of the butcher knife into the slit so it lodges itself inside the hoof. I must lift the blade and hoof up into the air at the same time and crash down with considerable force on the cutting board in order to make a clean split. I leave this work to the professionals from Jiangxi, as I value my fingers and kneecaps.

Customers are obviously wondering what the hell I’m doing here. I just give them a steady look and try to tell them the right prices. I don’t want to screw this up. This experience could look good on a resume somewhere. At one point amidst the shopping, a girl and her mother come up to buy some pork. The girl must be about my age. She says to her mother, “what’s a foreigner doing here chopping meat?” Instead of waiting for her mother to answer, I tell her that I am training to be a butcher. Then she speaks to me in perfect English. Turns out she wants me to be her private English tutor. We talk for a while as I let the customers go buy. All the while, the butchers from Jiangxi are as busy as ever. It occurs to me that this situation could only happen in China. Here I am, a butcher in the middle of slicing through a nice slice of pork fat, and a beautiful girl approaches me and asks me to teach her English, something that has nothing to do with pork. As it turns out, I will end up having lunch with this girl and her family at a later date, but that’s a story for another time.

After a while, I realize I’m just holding my Jiangxi friends back, so I move over to the woman pulverizing the ground pork. This job looks more manageable. She lets me jump in and I take the two butcher knives in both hands and start haphazardly pulverizing the meat with no plan in mind. It’s all fun and games until a customer approaches, and she takes their order. She weighs the meat and gives them a price. I like the feeling of chopping the meat and the sound it makes as the blade squishes into it. I think to myself how glad I am that I came here today, the Sun shining down on me, its glare glistening on the blade. Another customer approaches and I speed up the rhythm of my blades.

•