Early the next morning, Yan Fei was on his way to the butcher.
It was just starting to get light, the meat stand was still being set up. Yan Fei waited for the butcher to arrive with his cart and hurriedly stepped in to help hang the pig up on the hooks.
The meat he was buying this time wasn't for his own family, but gifts for relatives. Generally, the daughters of Sancha Town who are married off return to their maternal home on the second day of the Chinese New Year, bringing "gift strips" with them. These are cuts of meat from the pig's belly, fatty with two or three ribs. They're cut into long strips, the small ones weigh about 3 catty, the larger ones, five or six. When it comes to giving gifts to relatives, options are rather limited at this time; usually, it's two bags of fruits and two bags of sugar, topped off with a gift strip.
