Author's note: Do not read this post if you have delicate composition, are prone to barfing and/or pregnant. For all three above reasons, the Sheppard family should probably not read this post. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Ice-ball fights are definitely NOT as fun in Beijing. They should be; they're rare.
Northern China is desert so it doesn't rain or snow much. The watercolor paintings you see of China's verdant hills, bamboo forests, otherworldly limestone formations and panda bears is not Beijing. Beijing is large and flat, dusty and smoggy; it is a massive swatch of brownish-red, cracked earth. Trees are sparse and pandas can only be found at the zoo.
The snowfall last month was light, maybe 1/2 an inch, enough for any young child to consider a winter wonderland. The kids were thrilled to play outside after school. They blissfully ignored their ice-soaked nylon tennis shoes, sopping wet jeans and jack-hammering teeth. Their boots and snow gear, carefully purchased and packed, did not arrive in the air shipment as intended.
The boys plan du jour was to ice up Park Avenue's "silver-bullet," a two-story metal slide, the super-fast kind of slide that insurance companies banned long ago in the US. We also iced up the slide's landing. Eli ran and surfed down the ice slide on his shoes, going so fast he caught air. When he hit the runway he either tumbled out of control or whooshed along until he hit the giant trampoline ramparts. Finn, who is generally more cautious than his brother, launched butt down, catching air and crash landing all the same. We were in stitches, ignoring the gasps and screams some other Park Avenue residents. The crazy Sheppard family at it again.
The day's snow play was fun until I got to thinking. It was so much fun until I looked down. I know better than to look down. I know I know better than to look down.
It was dusk but I could tell the slush I was scooping and smearing on the slide was death-gray, it was nothing but a thin coating of ice chips that were perhaps blasted out of the sky by the Chinese Government's rain-making efforts, a mere flocking of the detritus of the Beijing Streets.
I was scooping up the detritus of the Beijing streets and smearing it onto the slide, my children's hands, jackets and pants were already grotesque casualties. I was trying to tamp down this nauseating thought when a slush ball slapped me in the back of the neck and began its cold trickle down. My thoughts turned to scorching bath water, fortified by vinegar and creating a bonfire out of our clothing. Those clothes can never be worn again.
I'm not a germ-a-phobe, really I'm not. On a good day, this is what I think of germ-a-phobes: "Good luck with that!" I sincerely feel bad for people who devote so much time to an intractable problem. Besides, don't our bodies need exposure to germs in order to fight them? During one of my frequent dark moments I might think: "Thanks, morons, for creating these super mega germs and poisoning our water supply with your all your anti-bacterial soap non-sense and anti-biotic addiction.
On Poop
That said, the Beijing streets are capital N-A-S-T-Y. Shit and piss and loogies and barf are everywhere. Dog shit, kid shit, worker-man shit (check a construction site--no porta-potties!). None of the shanties in the hutongs behind us have plumbing! All the street vendors use the the tree enclosures of Park Avenue as their bathrooms as Ruby and I discovered one day while walking. It's a miracle to come home without feces patterned to the souls of your shoes!
And y'all probably have heard about the crack pants. It is customary for children to roll commando with giant splits in the crotch of their pants. Just squat, poop and go. Don't worry about picking up the poo, no scoop laws here for dogs, kids or adults! Now I think disposable diapers are an assault on Mother Nature, but cap that crack with cotton, yo!
On Phlegm
If you are one of the 20 million Beijingers over the age of 30, you could win a loogey-hawking contest. The Chinese have a nasty habit of spitting. Spitting is actually too gentle a word. Horking better captures the sound and sentiment of the sport. The country's soundtrack should be honking horns, burps and gargling phlegm exorcisms. The soundtrack loops everywhere: sidewalks, offices, even restaurants.
The government worked overtime to punish violators during the SARS outbreak and before the Olympics. Only the middle and upper-class educated youth got the message. Migrant workers of all ages, men, even the sweet-looking little old ladies will frequently send a viscous throat cocktail your way. Nothing more non sequiter than watching two little old ladies, gracefully dressed, walking arm in arm down the boulevard, talking in singsong voices. One stops, snorts, heaves and gargles and issues a flying, gelatinous slug. It is shocking.
While disgusting and a major health-hazard, spitting is considered an inalienable right, a necessity for personal well-being. It's nasty logic: when smoke and pollution and phlegm are trapped in the shenti (body), expel them. If you happen to be smoking a cigarette and need to clear your pipes, no problem! Just double barrel shoot the crap out your nose! I've been in taxis where the driver managed to smoke, drive and shoot a nose loogey out of a narrow crack in the window, all while navigating Beijing traffic! If you are sitting in the back seat of a Beijing taxi, always keep your window closed!
My American neighbor recently went to a doctor fearing that the lump in her throat was a swollen thyroid or a cancerous pollup. It was just an emulsion of Beijing. The doctor's remedy: hawk more loogeys!!
On Vomit
Sometimes we play "Count the Barf Splats." One day I counted 10 separate "sidewalk texturing incidents" just on my 30-minute walk to school. Every time Finn and Eli see a barf splat, which to say is often, they make dramatic hurling noises and contort their bodies like they are disgorging the contents of their own stomachs. The Chinese people seem to get a kick out of this.
I wondered why the vomiting epidemic. Food poisoning? Well, we have eaten all manner of street food and have yet to barf, sensitive stomachs and all. Debauchery? No clubs or bars in this part of town, though the texture count does rise on Mondays. Population density? Perhaps, but in other big cities I have never seen so much vomit.
Then, walking home from school one day, I got my answer. I was passing by a bank and the guard in front was snarffling and suctioning and hoarking and gargling. From his mouth issued a sickly frog-like glob that landed with a splat a few feet in front of me. After more heaving and gargling, the guard determined that there was still too much bad chi in his body so he began punching his gut until his lunch spewed out and landed a few feet behind me, gracing the bank's entrance. Where spitting doesn't work, barfing does the trick!
Curiously, the guard resumed his normal erect stance, trying to look important even though nobody robs banks in Beijing. He didn't ask for sick leave, nor was he sent home by the manager, and he made no attempt to clean the mess, leaving customers to step on or over it. It reminded me my first trip to Beijing in August. Somebody puked right in front of a street vendor's food cart. This I would call negative advertising. Not so in Beijing. The vendor left his cart, didn't bother to roll it even a few feet to right or left and the morning's paid no mind, stepping on the pile to purchase their Beijing Omlettes.
But There Must Be Street Cleaners?
Beijing is city of 28 million people, the majority of who ascribe to the "better out than in" philosophy of health care, a city where it rarely rains to flush all the detritus into the drains.
On the main boulevards and in prominent tourist areas, you see the Waste Management crews in their neon-orange suits, with their little carts and bamboo brooms. Bamboo brooms are great for sweeping the fallen leaves of the very sickly looking trees; they are worthless for feces removal. The dry stick brooms just spear the poop and rake it around until the sidewalks are swirled with brown, making it impossible to NOT step on poo.
Outside the main boulevards and tourist areas, where YOU the foreigner, should see no reason to go, there is no waste management. Perhaps you now know why we call the alley behind our apartment "Stinky Alley."
Anyway, if you plan to visit us in Beijing, do yourself a favor: Don't look down.
