What’s the beef?

Earlier this week, we hiked up the mountain behind our house to fetch some fresh water. This is something a lot of locals do, many pushing baby strollers full of empty bottles up the road to get the water in bulk.

The water is fed down from the mountains through long, narrow tubes that hang over the bouldered walls on the side of the road. It’s free and clean, and the hike up is a weekly ritual I now look forward to – good exercise, fresh air, and a pretty spectacular view of this burgeoning mountain town in the middle of Zhejiang’s factory belt.

This week, on our way up, we saw a cow lying by the side of the road. Two butchers grasped sharp knives, slicing open the skin above the hoof and working their way down the legs, to the body, severing the penis, opening up the insides, pulling out the guts, hacking off the legs, slicing in between the rib cage, and finally splitting open the animal. I stood there for more than half an hour in awe. Home was not far away, so I could have ran back to get my camera. But I couldn’t bring my legs to move. I just stood there, taking it all in.

Why were they doing this on the side of the road?

“Look how many people walk by and see. It’s good for business,” replied the butcher.

A crowd had gathered around the butchers; neighbors, passersby, local townspeople and farmers. Cars and motorcycles rolled to a halt at the sight of the cow lying on its back, legs upright in the air. Red blood, so bright in colour that it looked like paint, ran down the street and into the sewers. A taxi cab driver put down his window and gaped.

“They’re butchering a cow!” he shouted into the cell phone, mid-conservation with a friend.

They sold the beef on a wooden platform attached to the back-end of a bicycle, a makeshift butcher stand right next to the carcass. Pieces ranged from 15 yuan (about $2 USD) to 25 yuan (less than $4 USD) a pound. The cow, I was told, was 2 years old.

“Back in the day, we wouldn’t have slaughtered such a cow,” one of the locals remarked. “We would have needed it to help with the farming.”

“Yea, but how much did we make back then?” said another local man. “30 cents a month? Look how much they’ll make selling the beef today.”

You’d think life in a rural town moves slowly. But here, life seems to move faster than it ever did when I was living in some of the world’s greatest cities. Day after day I see the town grow and change. In early January, new lanes were built exclusively for the town’s rickshaws. Later that week, new traffic and pedestrian lights have appeared at all the major intersections in town. At first, the Chinese drivers didn’t abide by them. But slowly, it’s sinking in: green means go and red means stop. New stores are opening up every month here. New fashions are pouring in as quickly and frequently as the migrants are. My hairdresser was from Fujian province. I had a lamb kebab last month grilled by a Uighur.

The townspeople here remember a vastly different yesterday, a time when they made just 30 cents a month and a time when meat was a luxury. Slaughtering a cow on the side of the road may seem backward and rural, but 15 to 20 years ago, you wouldn’t have seen that happening.

Life in the country moves quickly. It’s me, the city girl, that needs to keep up.