The Chinese consume pig meat like no other group of people on Earth. In addition to being the most important ingredient in a wide variety of actual pork dishes and dumplings, pork is also used to flavor every type of meat dish, not to mention the little flecks of pork you find at the bottom of vegetable dishes. Pigs, by the way are considered the smartest animals in the Chinese zodiac because they are clever enough not to do any work for anyone else but just to lie around and eat all day - a good life, and the kind of life many modern Chinese mothers hope for their own only-children to have.
As you can imagine, the recent rapid rise in the price of pigs (71% in a month) and pork (29% in a month) has effected everyone in the country except a few Buddhists. The dumpling stall by our school - so delicious they've been known to make people find religion - raised the price of a half-dozen dumplings from 3 RMB to 3.5 RMB. Figure in the exchange rate increase, and soon we might be paying a whole 50 cents for lunch!
Premier Wen JiaBao personally went to Xi'an to "investigate" the pig situation. In addition to high prices for the corn used to feed , he also found that this years pig production was reduced to due low pork prices in recent years and a blue ear disease outbreak.
The government has since announced it is prepared to rely on the national pig and pork reserve to ameliorate the situation.
I immediately thought of imperial stores of valuable treasures like jade, gold, and of course, pigs. It turns out the reserve is a much more modern construct, managed under the state-owned China Merchandise Reserve Management Center.
Since I'm not sure I will be able to take a field trip to see the pigs & pork reserve, and if I did, I doubt they would allow my camera in such a mission-essential government facility, I'll leave you with this photo of the Chinese premier inspecting pork in Xi'an.
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