During the time when I was in the countryside, I fed pigs and also took care of cattle.If left alone, these two kinds of animals would know perfectly well how to live their lives.They would wander around freely, eating when hungry and drinking when thirsty, and when spring came, they would talk about love;as a result, their level of living was very low, completely lacking in anything commendable.After people came, they made arrangements for their lives:the life of every cow and every pig had a theme.For most of them, this theme of life was quite tragic:the former's theme was work, the latter's theme was to gain weight.I don't think there is anything to complain about, because my life at that time wasn't much richer either, except for eight model plays, there was no other entertainment.There were an extremely small number of pigs and cows whose lives had different arrangements.Take pigs as an example, boars and sows had other things to do besides eating.As far as I could see, they didn't like these arrangements much either.The task of the boar was to mate, in other words, our policy allowed it to be a playboy.But the weary boar often put on the demeanor of a castrated pig (a meat pig), refusing to jump onto the sow's back.The task of the sow was to give birth to piglets, but some sows would eat their piglets.In general, human arrangements caused the pigs unbearable suffering.But they still accepted:pigs are always pigs after all.
Setting up various aspects of life is a unique trait of humans. Not only setting up animals, but also setting up oneself. We know that in ancient Greece there was Sparta, where life was set up to be utterly uninteresting, with the purpose of making men into desperate warriors and women into reproductive machines, the former like fighting cocks, the latter like sows. These two types of animals are very special, but I think, they probably didn't like their own lives. But what can you do if you don't like it? Both humans and animals find it hard to change their own fate.
The following talks about a pig that was somewhat different. When I fed the pigs, it was already four or five years old. In name, it was a meat pig, but it was black and thin, with bright eyes. This guy was as agile as a goat, jumping over a one-meter high pigpen easily; it could even jump onto the roof of the pigsty, which made it more like a cat - so it was always wandering around and never stayed in the pen. All educated youth who fed pigs treated it as a favorite, and it was also my favorite - because it was good only to the educated youth, allowing them to come within three meters, but if anyone else came, it would have run away long ago. It was male, and originally should have been castrated. But you try, even if you hide the castration knife behind your back, it can smell it out, staring at you with big eyes and roaring "oh oh". I always fed it porridge boiled with fine rice bran, and after it had eaten enough, I mixed the bran with wild grasses to feed the other pigs. The other pigs envied it and started shouting together. At this moment, the whole pig farm was filled with wailing and howling, but both it and I didn't care. After being full, it would jump onto the roof to bask in the sun, or imitate various sounds. It could mimic the sound of cars and tractors, very realistically; sometimes it would disappear all day, I guessed it went to nearby villages to look for female pigs. There were female pigs here too, but they were all locked up, overburdened by excessive reproduction, deformed, dirty, and smelly, it wasn't interested in them; the female pigs in the village looked better. It had many remarkable achievements, but since I fed pigs for a short time, I knew limitedly, so I won't write about them. In short, all educated youth who fed pigs liked it, liked its independent style, and said it lived gracefully. But the locals weren't so romantic, they said, this pig wasn't proper. The leaders hated it, which will be discussed later. I not only liked it - I respected it, often disregarding the fact that I was several years older, calling it "Brother Pig". As previously mentioned, this Brother Pig could imitate various sounds. I think it also tried to learn human speech, but didn't succeed - if it had learned, we could have had heartfelt conversations. But this couldn't be blamed on it. The difference in tone between humans and pigs is too great.
Later, Brother Pig learned to whistle like a steam whistle, which got him into trouble. There was a sugar factory where we lived, which whistled once at noon to change shifts for the workers. When our team went to work in the fields, we would return upon hearing this whistle. My Brother Pig would jump onto the roof every morning at ten o'clock to imitate the whistle, and the people in the fields would hear it and come back - this was an hour and a half earlier than the sugar factory's whistle. To be honest, this couldn't entirely be blamed on Brother Pig, after all, he wasn't a boiler, his whistle sounded somewhat different from the real thing, but the villagers insisted they couldn't tell the difference. The leadership therefore held a meeting, labeling it a bad element disrupting spring plowing, and decided to take dictatorial measures against it - I already knew the spirit of the meeting, but I wasn't worried about it - because if dictatorship meant ropes and knives, then there was absolutely no way. The previous leadership had tried before, but a hundred people couldn't hold it down. Dogs were useless too: Brother Pig ran like a torpedo, capable of knocking a dog a yard away. Who knew that this time they were serious, the instructor brought twenty-odd people armed with Type 54 pistols; the deputy instructor brought a dozen people armed with green protection shotguns, forming two groups to encircle and capture it on the open ground outside the pig farm. This put me in an inner conflict: according to my relationship with it, I should have grabbed two butcher knives and rushed out to fight alongside it, but I thought doing so would be too shocking - after all, it was just a pig; another reason was that I didn't dare to oppose the leadership, I suspected that this was the crux of the matter. Anyway, I just watched from the side. Brother Pig's composure made me admire it immensely: it calmly hid within the line formed by the pistols and shotguns, regardless of the shouts of people and barking of dogs, it wouldn't leave that line. Thus, if the people with pistols fired, they would hit those with shotguns, and vice versa; if both sides fired simultaneously, both would be hit. As for it, due to its small size, it would likely be unharmed. After circling a few times like this, it found an opening and charged out - running off gracefully. Later, I saw it once more in the sugarcane field; it had grown tusks and still recognized me, but wouldn't let me get close anymore. This coldness hurt me deeply, but I approved of it keeping its distance from people with sinister intentions.
I am already forty years old, apart from this pig, I haven't seen anyone dare to ignore the settings of life so much. On the contrary, I've seen many people who want to set others' lives, and also those who are content with being set. Because of this reason, I have always remembered this independent-minded pig.