Exhibition still, Site Gallery, 2010
A pig breeder sells a three-month old, 30 kg piglet to a pig farmer, like Mo Chuanglun. At Mo’s piggery, it feeds for six months on pigswill, collected by motorbike from nearby restaurants. Mo sells the fully-grown, 90 kg pig to a local wholesaler, who sells it on to a large-scale wholesaler like Xiang Weixing. Xiang drives a lorry load of pigs to Guangzhou’s night-time livestock market. At 2am, Lin Yingte, a butcher, strides through the pens hitting pigs on their haunches with a short metal bar until he finds ones that ‘sound right’. Two are chosen, weighed and paid for, then sent to the government abattoir for processing. At 8am, Lin and his wife, Su Guzhen, receive four half-pig carcasses at their market stall and expertly butcher them. Each day, Yuan Xinghuo buys minced pork from Su, to stuff the buns he sells from his own street trolley.
