From “The Maverick Pig,” included in the collection Pleasure of Thinking, which was published this month by Astra House. Translated from the Chinese.

At the commune, I fed pigs and herded oxen. Had there not been anyone around to manage them, those two animals would have known exactly how to live. They would have wandered around eating and drinking as they pleased, and when spring came they would have looked for a little romance. Of course in such a scenario their standard of living would have been very low; it would have been totally unremarkable. Then, people came along…