Pow!

was run by an old woman with her son and daughter-in-law; they prepared exactly five hundred of the beefy delicacies every day. Customers signed up a week in advance. What was so special about the Xie-family meatballs? Their unique flavour. And what made the flavour unique? The choice cuts of beef. But, even more importantly, the Xie family's meatballs never came in contact with metal. The meat was sliced by sharpened bamboo strips, then laid out on cloth-washing rocks and beaten with a date-wood club into a meaty pulp. Special millet crumbs were kneaded into the meat before it was rolled into balls and put, along with kumquats, in earthen jars to be steamed on trays. Then the kumquats were thrown out and only the meatballs remained, a true taste sensation…I hated the thought of destroying a restaurant which produced such delicacies, especially since old Mrs Xie was such a kind woman and her son a friend of mine. Sorry, Mrs Xie and my old buddy, but killing Lao Lan is more important to me. I dropped in the fourteenth shell. It sped off into the air only to run smack into a wild goose headed in the opposite direction. Nothing but bones and feathers were left of the bird while the shell was knocked off course and landed in a pond behind the Xie house, raising a column of water and turning at least ten big crucian carp into fish paste.

    The township's most notorious female free spirit, whose name was Jiena but whom everyone called Little Black Girl, had a remarkable voice. Her songs had been broadcast daily over the loudspeakers in the days of the Cultural Revolution. A bad family background stood in the way of a splendid future, and she had been forced to marry a dyer from a working-class family. He went out every day on his bicycle to pick up clothes to be dyed. High-quality fabric was in short supply in those days, so young people tore up old white cloth and had it dyed green to resemble faddish army gear. Even caustic soda was ineffective in cleaning the green stains from the dyer's hands, and what that would have meant for Jiena's milky white breasts is not hard to contemplate. And so Jiena strayed from her marriage vows. Her relationship with Lao Lan went back a long time, so when he made his fortune she looked him up. I'd always liked this charming woman. She had a captivating voice, thanks to her musical past. But I could not let that stop me from aiming the fifteenth shell at her house, where she and Lao Lan were reminiscing, teary-eyed, over a shared bottle and indulging in pillow talk. The missile landed in an old dye vat, sending green dye flying everywhere. The dyer would not only wear the green hat of a cuckold but also live in the green house of one.

    The sixteenth shell was supposed to hit the meatpacking plant's conference room but it was missing one of its wings and began to wobble in mid-air. It landed in Yao Qi's pigsty, killing the sow they had spoilt so badly.

    The meat-inspection office was the recipient of the seventeenth shell. Chief Inspector Han and his deputy were lightly wounded. One piece of shrapnel, big enough to end Lao Lan's life, hit the model-worker brass medal, presented by the city officials and pinned to the left breast of his jacket. The impact sent him reeling into the wall. His face paled and he all but spat blood. It was the most damage any of my shells had inflicted on him so far; and even though he survived the blow it scared the hell out of him.

    If any of the shells was assured of taking Lao Lan out it was the eighteenth—because he was standing in an open-air public toilet relieving himself, totally exposed. The projectile could easily slip through the gaps of the parasol-tree branches overhead. But then I was reminded of the hero from the old couple's village who had killed an enemy soldier while he was taking a shit—what a shameful way to kill a man. Killing Lao Lan while he was taking a leak would not bring me glory, and so I had no choice but to alter the course slightly and have the shell land in the nearby privy. POW! He was covered in shit. A lot of fun but a low blow.

    After firing the nineteenth shell, I realized that I had just violated an international treaty. It landed in the township treatment room and sent glass flying everywhere. The nurse on duty, the lazy sister-in-law of the deputy township head, normally sat in a chair behind a patient spread-eagled over a table, arse in the air, ready to receive to an injection. When the mortar shell hit she