Since we often prefer to pound our own cutlets rather than buy uneven precut cutlets from the store, a meat pounder is an important piece of equipment.

The border of the great north-west province of Xinjiang, a region three times the size of France, lay at the mining town of Mangnai, fifty miles beyond where I was sleeping. This was an old, feared frontierland - High Tartary or Chinese Turkestan - one sixth of all China now, which barged up against Central Asia. But at Mangnai the road roughened to a stone trail, where trucks, even my bus, gave up.

For godly sorrow worketh repentance.

It was bogglingly complex, with 212 speaking parts, more than 1000 camera setups, 95 scenes, 15 separate film stocks, and endless intercuts and flashbacks -- everything but footnotes, Stone joked.