Human meat dumplings

\Human Meat Dumplings\ The story takes place in Taipei City. Any person from Taipei, or someone who has lived in Taipei, or even those who have never lived in Taipei, should know about the most famous tunnel in Taipei. Yes, that is the Xinhai Tunnel, renowned for its ghost stories. The Xinhai Tunnel stretches long, connecting Taipei City to the Jingmei and Muzha areas, serving as a key traffic route for Wenshan District to Taipei City. At the entrance of the tunnel on this end, the Taipei City Second Funeral Home stands prominently nearby, and next to the funeral home is the water treatment plant supplying drinking water to the whole city. One might say Taipei people are quite creative; after the bodies are cremated in the funeral home, the ashes disperse and merge into the storage tanks, adding natural calcium and iron minerals. It seems that the incidence of osteoporosis among Taipei citizens should be relatively low. The Xinhai Tunnel passes through an unobtrusive gentle hill, which has very few trees and looks bare and unattractive. The hill is densely dotted with various types of earthen mounds, so the National Taiwan University male students living in dorms at the foot of the hill jokingly call it 'Mantou Mountain' (Steamed Bun Mountain). On both sides of Mantou Mountain, scattered households sit at the hill's base, remnants of early military dependents' villages. The exact time when the story happens is not clear, but in any case, this story occurred at a small dumpling shop at the foot of the hill. The dumpling shop owner, let's call him Old Man Huang, is a retired veteran who lived single for fifty years and only married a widow through an introduction. The widow came with two sons, but Old Man Huang did not mind that they were burdens, treating them as his own and caring for them. After some discussion, the couple decided to borrow some money, and then supplement it with the small savings Old Man Huang had accumulated over the years, to open a small restaurant selling noodle dishes and handmade dumplings. The dumplings Huang made were very authentic in flavor, and his wife worked tirelessly to help run the shop. However, for some reason, business was always poor. Even if it was merely quiet, the worst part was that it was gradually declining. Customers who came once usually never returned. Gradually, the daily amount of dough they rolled decreased, but the dumplings left unsold in the freezer kept increasing. One day, they only sold a single plate of dumplings the whole day. That night, after closing the shop, Old Man Huang and his wife sat despondently at the table, facing each other like prisoners. Old Man Huang said to his wife, 'It can't go on like this. We have to think of a way, or else we won't be able to repay the big loan we took when opening the shop.' His wife replied, 'What kind of way is there to think of?'You men can't think of a good solution, so how could I, a woman, know what to do?" Old Huang scratched his head and thought for a long time, then said with a worried face, "No matter how hard I try, I still can't figure it out. Our dumplings taste pretty good, so there's no reason why customers won't come to our door!" His wife nodded, "Yeah! I can't figure it out either." "Let's just..." After a while, Old Huang said softly, "Why don't we just close the shop early? Otherwise, we'll lose even more." His wife asked, "But if we close the shop, what will we use to pay off the debt?" Old Huang thought for a while, then let out a heavy sigh, speechless. "How about this!" His wife said, "Should we go to the temple to burn incense and ask for a fortune slip?" Old Huang thought it over and agreed, so he decided that the next day his wife would go to the market to buy some incense, fruit, and meat, while the two of them went to the temple to pray and draw fortune sticks. The temple wasn't big, and there weren't many worshippers, but the neighbors all said it was quite effective. The couple asked for lots and then asked the temple keeper to interpret them. The temple keeper read the fortune poem for a long while, then looked Old Huang up and down, lost in thought. Old Huang anxiously asked, "What does this lot say?" The temple keeper shook his head and said nothing, making Old Huang even more anxious: "Is this lot not good?" The temple keeper asked Old Huang and his wife about their livelihood, shook his head and sighed, "Your family is currently facing misfortune, and in the future, things will continue to decline. If you're lucky, your wealth will be gone; if your fate is bad, it's hard to avoid family ruin and death......" The couple was shocked. Old Huang quickly asked, "So, is there a way to break this deadly spell?" The temple caretaker hesitated, shaking his head and sighing. Old Huang's wife burst into tears and knelt before the temple keeper: "Master, please show me a way out!" Old Huang couldn't help but kneel down too: "Master, please! I'm already old, and my two children are still young. If this keeps up, what will happen to them?" "It's not that there are no ways to resolve misfortune, it's just..." said the temple keeper. "Master, please tell me, no matter how much money it costs, it doesn't matter!" Old Huang and his wife pleaded urgently. It's quite ridiculous—the two of them had come to pray to the gods because their money was almost gone, but now they were so anxious they even said, "It doesn't matter how much money you spend," without even thinking about where the money came from. "You've misunderstood, I'm not asking you for money!The temple caretaker said, 'It's not that I deliberately didn't tell you, it's just that this method is extremely immoral.' Mr. Huang and his wife begged desperately, and finally, the temple caretaker sighed: 'Alright! I'll tell you. But you absolutely cannot let anyone else know, or you will face great disaster.' He lowered his voice and said, 'The only way to reverse your luck is to make human meat dumplings.' 'Human meat dumplings?' Mr. and Mrs. Huang were so frightened that their faces turned pale, staring blankly at the temple caretaker. 'Yes! Human meat dumplings. This is the only way to change your family's destiny. But you must remember, under no circumstances can anyone else know about this. Also, your own family must not eat these dumplings, or grave misfortune will certainly befall you.'

Mr. and Mrs. Huang, dazed, thanked the temple caretaker and returned home, heavy-hearted, saying nothing all the way. After a short midday rest, the wife asked, 'What do you think?' Mr. Huang asked, 'What do you think? Are we really going to do it?' His wife pondered for a while: 'Or should we just watch our family decline like this?' They stared at each other for a while, and finally made a firm decision to follow the caretaker's instructions, beginning to plan how to obtain the human flesh. Mr. Huang's dumpling shop was located at the foot of Mantou Mountain, near a funeral home that was always noisy with drums and music. On good days, even the hearse had to wait in line, so in terms of meat sources, there would be no shortage.

They decided to dig up fresh graves. To avoid being noticed, of course, they could only operate on dark, windy nights, and they had to dismember the bodies at the grave site before carrying them down the mountain to avoid attracting attention. The couple discussed for a long time and agreed that each time they took flesh, they would cut the meat from the chest, abdomen, buttocks, and legs, selecting the fatty abdominal or buttock meat for dumpling filling because it had a better texture, while the leg and arm meat, being more exercised, would have a chewier texture. Since the temple caretaker repeatedly emphasized that their own family must not eat the human meat dumplings, the couple could not taste the new dumplings themselves and had to calculate the filling proportions by estimation.

That night, the couple nervously climbed the mountain, muttering prayers and shaking as they dug up a fresh grave, cut the meat from the body, and stumbled down the mountain. Along the way, apart from the chirping of insects and occasional passing car, there was nothing else.The couple did not speak to each other. Tiptoeing back home, Old Huang immediately cleaned the meat thoroughly and minced it, while his wife began rolling out sheets of prepared dough. Once Old Huang had mixed the human meat filling, the two of them quickly started making dumplings, working until past four in the morning before taking a bath and going to bed.

Strangely, the next morning, just after ten o'clock, shortly after Old Huang opened the shop, within ten minutes the store was full. Customers came and went like waves, and business was so good that there wasn't even time to wipe off sweat. Old Huang's sweat fell into the boiling pot like raindrops. His wife was not idle either; in fact, her hands were almost falling off from rolling new dough continuously, and the dumplings they had just made were immediately dropped into the pot. The two of them busied in and out until closing time, and even the coldest customers couldn't help telling them, "Boss, your dumplings taste really great." After closing, the couple sat smiling at the table counting money, overjoyed to find that the money earned in one day was more than what they usually earned in two weeks. Though their bones ached from exhaustion, both felt full of vigor. And they had not forgotten: they still had work to do that night.

"Yesterday was just a trial run, but I didn't expect business to be this good today. I think we should get more meat tonight, so we won't have to go up the mountain every night," Old Huang whispered to his wife, who quickly nodded: "Yes, yes! I was thinking the same. And today is a good day, so we should be able to gather more meat. If we store it in the freezer, it can last two or three days, saving us some trouble."

So the couple went up the mountain again. Ever since Old Huang started selling human meat dumplings, business had been unbelievably good. The couple was ecstatic; their bodies, weary from the day's labor, seemed to rejuvenate as if dead wood had sprung to life, full of energy and unbothered by hard work.In just a week, he earned a considerable fortune. Not only that, the fame of Old Huang's dumplings spread like wildfire. One told ten, ten told a hundred, and even gourmets from as far away as Keelung and Taoyuan came in search of them. There were so many customers that the shop wasn't big enough, forcing people to line up and wait. The crowds and traffic were so overwhelming that passersby often thought a high-ranking official or a VIP was having a funeral, and when they realized it was just an unassuming dumpling shop, they were invariably stunned.

Early that morning, Old Huang and his wife were still asleep, while their youngest son had already gotten up to get ready for school. Their eldest son was now in the sixth grade of elementary school, and the youngest was in the fourth grade. Although both children were young, they were obedient and sensible. The youngest son glanced at his mother snoring loudly and, not wanting to wake her, knew that his stepfather and mother had been working late into the night every day lately and were very exhausted. He felt they deserved a good rest, so he opened the fridge to prepare his lunch.

There wasn't much ready-to-eat food in the fridge, just a plate with ten cooked dumplings, perhaps leftovers from yesterday. The youngest son packed those ten dumplings into his lunchbox, slung his backpack over his shoulders, and left for school.

During the first class, his stomach began to rumble because he hadn't eaten breakfast. He glanced at his lunchbox in the drawer and thought to sneaky eat one while the teacher wasn't looking. Carefully, he opened a small slit in the lunchbox. Initially, nothing seemed unusual, but then he was startled to find that one dumpling was missing through the slit.

"How come one is missing?" he counted quietly: "There were clearly ten this morning, but counting over and over, there are only nine." The youngest son felt extremely strange and scared, quickly closing the lunchbox.

By the second class, he was so hungry he couldn't bear it, so he secretly opened the lunchbox again. Peering through the slit, he was shocked once more. "Eight?" he thought. "How did it become eight? Just a moment ago there were nine!" This was terribly strange.

The youngest son didn't dare to open the lunchbox again and endured his hunger until noon. Then he ran with his lunchbox to his brother's classroom, secretly called him out, and told him what had happened. "How could something like this happen?"Although he was two years older, the older brother wasn't any braver. He carefully opened the lunchbox just a crack and peeked inside: “Strange! There are only seven! Did you get confused in your sleep? You only put seven dumplings in, didn't you?”

The younger brother denied it desperately: “No, no! I really put ten dumplings in!” The older brother was half-doubtful and peeked through the crack again to count the dumplings, and this time he was stunned. “Six!”

The brothers rewrapped the lunchbox and didn't dare open the lid again. They waited until school was over in the afternoon and then ran home as fast as they could.

When Old Man Huang's wife heard the brothers narrate this strange incident, she turned pale with fright. “Oh no!” she thought, “These past two weeks, my husband and I have been so busy we didn't have time to take care of the kids, and we forgot to tell them not to eat the dumplings at home. Could this lead to a disaster?” She asked anxiously, “Tell me the truth. Did you eat any of the dumplings at home?” The two children shook their heads vigorously.

“Are you really not lying?” she asked. “If nobody ate the dumplings, how could they be missing?” The children argued earnestly: “We really didn't! We really didn't eat any!” The younger son said, “We really didn't! Every time we open the lid, one dumpling disappears—it's so scary!”

Old Man Huang's wife was so nervous her hands were trembling, and she kept thinking, “It's over, it's over! Could this be a sign that some great misfortune is about to come?” She slowly opened the lunchbox just a crack: “...Five.” She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself; the dumplings had been sitting so long that they seemed to be giving off a sour human-meat smell. She opened the box again a little and murmured as she counted through the crack: “...Four.”

Four. She began to shout and scream, seemingly going mad. Hearing the commotion, Old Man Huang rushed in and found his wife's face streaming with tears: “It's justice from the heavens already! Why is this happening? Why is this happening?”

Old Man Huang anxiously asked, “What's going on? What's going on?” The two children explained everything to him, and Old Man Huang was equally terrified. “Could a great disaster really be about to strike?” he asked. “Good children, honestly tell your father, did you really not eat any dumplings?” The two children shook their heads firmly. The younger son's face turned red with urgency: “Really didn't! I really didn't eat a single one! I didn't even drink the broth from the dumplings!”

Old Man Huang remembered the warning from the temple caretaker and couldn't help panicking."'At worst, you lose all your money; at worst, the family is ruined and people die...' He, like his wife, trembled and didn't dare to lift the lid of the lunchbox, only slightly opening a slit. Three. There were only three dumplings left in the lunchbox this time. He closed the lunchbox and after a while, repeated the same action. It was truly horrifying—there were only two left. 'How could this happen? How could this happen? How could this happen?' An ominous foreboding heavily hung over the heads of the four people at the table. Old Huang's hands shook like he had a stroke, unable to open the lunchbox lid any further. With great effort, he managed to open just a small slit, a slit large enough for all four to clearly see: this time, there was only one dumpling left in the lunchbox. What to do? A lunchbox that loses one human meat dumpling every time it is opened lay quietly on the table, and none of the four dared to touch it. After a long while, Old Huang said sadly, 'This is all fate! Heaven has destined our family to encounter disaster, and we can't escape it.' He reached out to open the lunchbox to see what was left inside, but his wife grabbed his hand and cried, 'No! No! Why must we have such a bitter fate? We've only just started to get things going...' Old Huang shook his head and sighed, a tear hanging at the corner of his eye: 'What is meant to come cannot be avoided...' He steeled his heart and forcefully lifted the lid of the lunchbox completely. Instantly, the four people stared blankly at the lunchbox, faces pale or ashen, silently--

(Look below...)

It turned out, all ten dumplings were stuck to the inside of the lunchbox lid."