7th April, bull slaughtering!

靖南 's 舅舅 happened to be building a new 傣族 home and the "housewarming" is on the 7th. according to chuan, every villager who builds a new home will have to invite friends, family and everybody in the village to his home for a dinner, kinda like a housewarming party...

every household in the village is supposed to contribute a person to help with the housewarming event, men will be helping to slaughter the cow, chickens or help out with any last minute touch-ups to the house etc while the women will help to prepare the food for the event.

anyway, the cow slaughtering took place in the morning at the river! there were about a dozen plus men at the river of all ages, and obviously the old were more experienced but the young were much stronger and fitter. here goes the pics of the cow slaughtering!

the pails of drained cow blood...

adding fuel and preparing the blowtorch to torch the cow

all work and no play is boring so they stopped every now and then to smoke a couple of cigarettes and to barbecue chicken meat to eat =D

the dead cow by the river bed  and the trail of blood it left behind...

they also had a huge oil barrel with water inside, and they left it on top of a fire to boil the water. the wood for the fire came from the unwanted wood/wood shavings used to build the home and it has been boiling there for quite some time. when the water is boiling hot, some dude went over to scoop a huge pail of the boiling water and poured it all over the cow's body and the other men would scrape off the fur of the cow with their knives or some sticks. the key is to quickly remove the fur once you pour the hot water over it, because if you wait too long, it will be very difficult to remove the fur so there are alot of guys crowding around the cow, removing watever fur they can get their hands on..

pouring hot water over the cow to make it easier to remove the fur/hair/hide/whatever you call it...

the experienced old man preparing the blow torch to flame the cow

at the same time, an old man was preparing the blow torch and when most of the fur is removed, he will torch the cow until the body turns brownish. at the same time, they will also scrape off any remaining fur/whatever stuff stuck on the body.

flaming and scraping...

here comes the chickens!

while they were still messing around with the cow, somebody delivered a few baskets/coops of live chickens and those not messing with the cow would grab a couple of chickens and slaughter them before proceeding to defeather the chicks, clean it, boil it, flame it, remove the organs etc...

jungle confidence course village style... grab the head and feathers, slit the throat, drain the blood, prepare for dinner =D

some guys washing the chickens in the river while a guy continued messing with the cow and others in the far end preparing the tractor to bring the cow back.

defeathering the chicken before they put it close to the flame. not sure what they do it for but they only do it for a short while. think its prob easier to remove the feathers when it is warm bah?

dunking the chicken into the huge oil barrel of boiling water...

the chicken-nator hard at work dissecting every possible part he can find...