Between dreams last night I saw a scene that seemed to come straight from a contemporary Chinese movie. Five or six men in ill-fitting black suits and ties were standing next to a shack surrounded by decrepit garden implements and broken wooden crates. A small but lush garden stood close to the shack. One of the men was talking to an old woman bent over by a life of heavy toil. “You must find a better place,” he was saying in measured words. “A new shopping mall is coming, and the party is behind it.” Her eyes glued to her muddy rubber shoes, she was just standing there when one of the men grabbed a cat walking past him. Holding it by the scruff of its neck, he raised it high in the air, and then he slammed it against the ground. Its spine broken, the cat shook violently. The man stepped on its head with the heel of his shoe. Hearing the crunch of the skull, the old woman started trembling. “It soiled my shoe,” mumbled the man and kicked the cat into the old woman’s garden. Without a word, the men walked away at a leisurely pace. Still trembling, the old woman took a cracked shovel leaning against her shack and shuffled toward the cat’s corpse. The scene remained sharp in my mind even after I woke up this morning.