There is an unwritten rule among the people in Hunan that is not to slaughter five-clawed pigs or sows. If a butcher encounters a five-clawed pig, he will persuade the owner to release it into the mountains and forests and let it die; if he encounters a sow, the butcher will not slaughter it, because eating sow meat will make the sick person sick and make the originally sick person's physical illness recur. However, some people do not believe in this evil, which triggers a series of stories.
中文 During the Southern Song period, Xinning, Hunan was famous for producing piglets. Vendors from nearby Xiangshao Henghuai would come to Xinning to sell piglets and then sell them everywhere.
There is a pig dealer named Xu Desheng in Huaihua Huitong Shangping Town. He often goes to Xinning to buy piglets and then sell them in Shangping Town. Because Xinning's piglets are willing to eat and grow fast, Xu Desheng makes a lot of profits.
One year, Xu Desheng entered a batch of piglets in Xinning as usual. During the sale in Shangping Town, Xu Desheng found that there was a piglet with five claws inside. The locals are shy about the five-clawed pigs, and of course they won't want them.
No one wants this five-clawed piglet. Xu Desheng felt very uncomfortable. If he wiped it out, he would just throw away a few taels of silver. Then this business not only won’t make money, but also lose money.
In order not to make the business lose money, Xu Desheng instructed his wife Wu Yueniang to feed the five-clawed pig at home. Because Xu Desheng often deals with pigs, he is also half a butcher. He wants to raise the pig while his wife is raising it and then slaughter it for sale.
Xu Desheng's plan has been decided, but Wu Yueniang is a little scared. She is afraid that this five-clawed pig will bring bad things to her family, so she advised her husband to release it back into the mountains. Xu Desheng is an arrogant man, so he is not willing to follow him. Wu had no choice but to lock the five-clawed pig into the pig cage and feed it with the other two pigs in the pigpen.
It is strange that although this five-clawed pig and the other two pigs are in the same pigpen, it does not associate with the other two pigs, and the food is more refined than the other two pigs, so Wu Yueniang had to divide the pig food into two portions when feeding.
In a blink of an eye, three months have passed, and the other two pigs have grown to about a hundred pounds, but the five-clawed pig is only a little bigger than when I first arrived.
Wu Yueniang saw that the five-clawed pig was eating delicately and refused to grow, so she persuaded her husband to release it so as not to waste food.
Xu Desheng ran to the pigpen to see it. As expected, as Wu Yueniang said, but the interests were at work in his heart. He said to Wu Yueniang, "It's the Mid-Autumn Festival on August 15th. I will feed it for a few more months. On August 15th, I will slaughter and sell it with the two pigs."
The couple has nothing to say for a while.
It is August 15th, and rural people in Hunan like to buy fresh meat to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Early in the morning, Xu Desheng got up early and asked his wife Yue Niang to go to the kitchen to boil water and prepare to slaughter pigs. Yue Niang went to prepare herself.
Xu Desheng prepared the pig slaughter tools and cleaned the pig slaughter field. He just waited for Yue Niang to boil the water and was ready to slaughter the pig. Desheng came to the pigpen, and the pigs in the pigpen seemed to smell a different scent from the past.
When Xu Desheng walked into the pigpen, the three pigs in the pen shook their heads and gasped with a "hum, hum, hum" and raised their heads from time to time to pay attention to Xu Desheng's movements. When he saw Xu Desheng coming in, three pigs walked around the wall. Even though Xu Desheng had been through a long battle, no one could do anything to them.
At this time, Yue Niang had already boiled the water and walked into the pigpen to help Xu Desheng catch the pig.
The couple blocked me in the pigpen, and finally caught a pig. The Xu couple pulled him outside and saw that it turned out to be the five-clawed pig.
The five-clawed pig was hooked by Desheng with an iron hook, and then Yue Niang scratched her tail with her hands behind her back. She couldn't move, but she let out a cry like a human being, which made people creepy when she heard it.
Xu Desheng pulled the pig onto the chopping board and was about to slaughter it. Unexpectedly, the five-clawed pig got the strength from somewhere. While Xu Desheng bent down to get the knife, he actually broke free from Xu Desheng's iron hook, rolled down from the chopping board, and ran out of Desheng's yard.
When the five-clawed pig rolled down the chopping board and ran away, Yue Niang was injured by the five-clawed pig with her hands with her back foot because of her weak strength. When the five-clawed pig ran away, Wu Yueniang went to stop it, but it turned around and bitten it, biting it. The pig was not slaughtered yet, and Yue Niang was injured.
Xu Desheng saw the pig run away. Not only did he not pity Yue Niang, but he blamed his little power for making mistakes. He was very angry. While scolding Wu Yue Niang for being useless, he caught the iron hook and chased the five-clawed pig.
Pigs leave the pigpen, just like a tiger going up the forest. How can Xu Desheng catch him alone? The five-clawed pig fed by Xu Desheng is short and concise, and runs faster than a rabbit. One person and one pig start fighting.
The five-clawed pig used "arch, bite, run" to Xu Desheng, while Xu Desheng used "coax, confusion, cheat". However, no matter what trick Xu Desheng uses, the five-clawed pig seemed to be able to see through it and then escape.
Desheng was only exhausted by the five-clawed pig, and in a blink of an eye, the sky began to brighten. It has been more than two hours since Xu got up in the early morning to slaughtering pigs until it was lightly dawn.
But it is said that there is a Zheng butcher next door to the Xu family. He returned from slaughtering pigs for people in the neighboring village that day and passed by the Xu family. When he saw Xu Desheng's pigs shouting, he came in to watch. He found that Xu Desheng could not catch the pig, so he helped.
With the help of Zheng Butcher Zheng, Xu Desheng finally caught the five-clawed pig back to the chopping board. When Xu Desheng was preparing to slaughter the pig, Zheng Butcher accidentally found that the pig's trotter he pressed with his hands had five toes. Zheng Butcher Zheng was shocked and said to Desheng: "This pig cannot be slaughtered, and it will cause trouble if it slaughtered."
Desheng said: "Don't believe in that evil, what can't be killed?" Before he finished speaking, he looked under the neck of the five-clawed pig.
Zheng Butcher met and hurriedly said, "Sin, sin, it's not that I want to kill you, I'm just passing by." After saying that, he didn't eat at Desheng's house and left hurriedly.
Xu Desheng slaughtered the five-clawed pig and indeed made dozens of taels of silver. However, since Xu Desheng slaughtered the five-clawed pig, he was very lucky. He first gave Wu Yueniang a lot of money to treat the pig's feet bitten by a pig. Later, the piglets he sold back from Xinning either sent swine fever , or did not eat for a long time, so he also lost a lot of money. Life was not going smoothly, and Xu Desheng was so angry that he was in a big hospital and lay in bed for half a year.
Although the words passed down by the older generation cannot be believed in them all, some of them still have some truth.
