BUNUN PIG SLAUGHTER 101
By Fritz Mendehlson
All photos by the author.
I remember getting the phone call. “Where in Taiwan are you now? We’re going to be celebrating my younger brother’s wedding this weekend. We’re gonna be slaughtering pigs to give to the family and friends to celebrate. You wanna come help?” All I could say was, “Of course.”
Now, a little background. The woman who called me is my Bunun host mother. Her family lives in Taiwan’s southeastern county of Taitung. For the Bunun, on any major occasion, traditionally you need to slaughter a boar, some of which to give to the gods, but mainly to give to friends and family because tradition dictates that for your happy occasion, you must make sure that everyone else gets to enjoy with you. Essentially, you are happy so you need to share that with the community and then when someone else has a happy occasion they do the same. There’s a strong institution of reciprocity and family ties for the Bunun; it’s deeply embedded. That’s why, in celebration of the wedding, that Saturday they were going to slaughter 10 pigs. You read that right. 10 pigs. You can’t give to some but not others, that’s not the way it works. Unfortunately for me I had to work that day, but the next day they were slaughtering a big pig to give all the family and friends who specifically helped with the prior day’s slaughter. I said I would definitely be there for that one. So after finishing work, I rushed down to my host family’s to help take part in the family tradition.
Arriving late Saturday night, everyone was exhausted. It no easy task to kill and slaughter 10 pigs. In my mind though, they were all mountain pigs. When I told my host mother that, she and the whole table laughed. “Are you kidding? You want us all to be arrested? Plus that’s a lot of work,” one of the uncles told me.
Again, some explanation. For the Bunun, and the other 15 recognized tribes which are in Taiwan, hunting and providing meat for your family was and still is a very important part of their culture as well as something that traditionally ties the community together. These traditions though, have been attacked by the mostly Han population which administers the country. Hunting is very contentious issue here, with the government generally not allowing indigenous people to hunt or trap (unless they jump through x amount of hoops, which I will not explain here but I’ll tell you one of the rules requires hunters to tell the government what they will catch before they even go on a hunt.), because they say that it endangers the wildlife on the island. This butts up against the argument that this is a culture right and that the history shows that these species clearly still have populations after thousands of years of being hunted by local people. Many would even say that aboriginal peoples managed the populations since their local institutions kept overhunting in check. Now though, the government has turned men who in their village are viewed as heroes or leaders into criminals and so in turn, the younger generation shies away from the practice, thus killing their culture and creating disconnect between the older and younger generations. Needless to say I was a bit sad about no mountain pig, but I digress. What we were going to do, was wake up at 6am, get into another uncles truck, then go to the pig farm the next town over. They made sure I had clothes that were ok to get messy. Lord knows I was gonna need it.
Up at 6, we all took a shot of Baolida and hoped in the truck. There’s nothing like the smell of pig farm at 6:30 in the morning. We backed the truck up to the pen and they gave me a big flat piece of wood. I was told that when the pig gets in the back I need to hold that wood over the back while they hogtie it. No problem I thought, but then I saw the pig. It was probably about 300lbs or so and it was not happy to get on the truck. Needless to say hogtieing it took a bit of time, but we finally got it on the truck and I got to sit in the back with it. The now subdued pig was quite a sight laying there. It was quite a smell too as it just kept shitting the whole time. But we finally got it back to the house and that’s when the real work began.
The whole family came out to see the massive pig. It would eventually be divided into 15 portions and divvied out amongst all those who helped. The groom, who lives in Kaohsiung and doesn’t really keep with much of the village traditions, did not want to do the honor of killing it himself, so the uncle who hogtied it agreed to. From out of nowhere, a 14-inch blade came out. The family was now all standing around waiting. The Bunun believe an animal must be killed in the quickest way possible so to avoid undue stress. So without any large ceremony, the uncle, just behind the front left leg, plunged the knife in and then withdrew it. Apparently by hitting that spot, the pig dies in the quickest way possible. What I wasn’t expecting was for it to bounce. The dying pig was clearly freaking out and it started to bounce on the back of the truck. In fact, it jumped so much that it bounced off the truck, landing on the ground. This was actually bit of a bonus since now we didn’t need to get it down ourselves. Within 30 seconds, it was all over. That was probably the most intense part. It went from living to not living, that’s how it works. Once the pig was down, everyone calmed down a bit.
I didn’t think about how many stages there are for butchering a pig. The first step is to wash it off, then clean off the first layer of skin and bristles. The uncles and aunts all worked together on this part. It took a while. At one point the uncle who had the knife got out his blowtorch. It actually worked really well to tighten the skin, after which scraping became much easier. We were all sweating by this point. But once scraped, the knife came back as we got the pig on its back and carfully cut from the anus to the midchest, and getting through the ribcage wasn’t easy, but we got it. Once that was done, we cut off the head. It was really important, as the ladies really wanted to get the pig snout soup underway (I still disagree that this is the best part of the pig. The freshly taken out liver sashimi with a soy/pepper sauce was actually way better. This is just the opinion of the author though).
Once the head was off, we took out the ribcage organs, because all the blood needed to be washed off thoroughly. After that, the stomach and intestines came out. They needed to be washed out thoroughly. The entire time this was going on, the men and women worked together and everyone knew what they needed to do. I, however, had a great time trying to make myself useful. Everyone was really encouraging though, as they needed another set of hands and were happy I was helping. And as much as I didn’t know what I was doing, my host family reiterated that unless you do it, with the family, you’ll never learn how to do it right in the future.
Once the organs were out and were being washed and soup got started, all that was left was the meat, so we moved the carcass to a tarp for butchering. This was man territory. Every uncle and cousin had their own ideas about how to start butchering it . This was when one uncle, who is a professional and was visiting family in the village rocked up. And with his button-down shirt and khaki pants on, rolls up his sleeves and took the knife. He then began explaining to me the proper meat divvying practices. The other men then followed his lead, so in about 40 minutes we had 15 nice portions. Then the important who-gets-which bundle list came out and we bagged everything up. This was followed by a brief ceremony where the groom thanked everyone and gave them their share. I gave my share to my host mother. From killing the pig to the ending ceremony, the whole process took about three hours.
Finally, we got to feast after that. There was so much delicious meat. Boiled pork, pork ribs, pork knuckles, fried pig skin, liver sashimi, cooked liver with soy sauce, and of course, snout soup. This coupled with the all the vegetables that people contributed from their farms was an amazing meal. I was in pork heaven and it was freakin delicious. Everyone ate as much as they wanted, and that’s when the older men started to tell their stories about mountain pigs hunts they’d been on. Many are like fish tales in the US, the huge one that got away etc. But other times you hear about the pig outsmarting them, or overpowering them, or attacking them first, or the traps they tried to set. I loved hearing those stories. It was a great time after so much work. And above all, it was a bonding experience. I promised my host family that next time I have a big occasion, we would get another pig to celebrate Bunun style, as long as uncle has the blowtorch.
Disclaimer: I realize that this article may have been graphic or distasteful for some, but you know, your food does come from somewhere. Meat comes from living things. To me, you have to be willing to understand that and deal with that if you want to be able to eat meat. So I have hunted and I have butchered game. To me it gives meaning to the food you eat because it makes you appreciate the fact that what we are putting in our mouths used to breath, and struggled to live on this planet like us. I am still really happy to be a human at the end of the day though. We are the most dangerous game. That goes without saying.
