Is it Real? Fake? Or Real Fake?

I'm lying on the floor with a bottle of Grey Goose.  It's not what you think.


I am inspecting to see if the label is straight; crooked labels are sure sign of piracy.   Ayi asks what I am doing.  I tell her I'm checking the liquor's authenticity--if it's jia (fake) or not.  Austin protests: "But I bought it at April Gourmet!"  April Gourmet is the little grocer in Park Avenue that caters to foreigners.  April gourmet is where we pay $9.00 for a box of cereal.  I swore I would never pay $9.00 for cereal.  I caved; I pay it. (Mental note:  open a small grocery catering to expats in China = get rich quick.)


According to an American wine distributor,  80% of the alcohol you buy, the upscale grocers included, is fake.  Let's assume for a minute that you just won the liquor roulette and selected a true bottle of, say, a nice Spanish Rioja.  Chances are that bottle has been sitting in Chinese customs tarmac in 100 degree weather or below-zero-degree weather for gosh knows how long.  We had three undrinkable bottles in a row.  The more circumspect distributors only import wine in the Spring and Fall when the weather's mild.  You have to buy direct from circumspect distributors.  You have to know a "wine guy."


We gave up (temporarily) trying to buy wine in China, but there still was this bottle of Grey Goose to consider.  Ayi said: "It can't be fake, it has a seal."  "But is the seal fake, I asked?" "Hmmmmm, maybe," she pondered. 


In China is it hard to know what is authentic.  A seal guarantees nothing.  It might just be sophisticated forgery.  When we first arrived in Beijing one of our myriad "handlers" asked me if I wanted to buy a "real phone, a fake phone or a real fake phone." After mulling over my odd and oddly sincere options I responded:  "Um, I dunno?"  I asked: "What is the difference?"  He said: "I dunno?  Price, usually."  I settled on a Lenovo, what our handler termed a "real-fake phone" because Lenovo is a legit Chinese brand that produces good but copied technology.  (I know some Americans working at Lenovo.  I mean no offense by this, I am just repeating the conversation.) The Lenovo I bought was cheap and good but unfortunately it was stolen.  Austin ordered me a pricy Samsung replacement that I'm sure is a fake-fake because it sucks.


I was advised to check all the 100 kuai notes that you withdraw from bank ATMs for fakes.  (Kuai is the spoken term for the Chinese currency.  They write Yuan but say kuai.  100 kuai is about $15 at the time of this writing.  I think it is the largest bank note.)  Several of the expats here have gotten fakes from banks.  Yes, from banks.  You cannot hope to get a refund unless you notify the camera right then and there.  To do this, you must face the camera and check every last bill before the ATM sucks up your card.  You cannot withdraw your card from the ATM because you need to have the transaction time stamped if you want a refund.  You have about 30 seconds to check before the ATM sucks up your card and you have to wait in line for hours to get it back.  Do I check my bills?  Sometimes. 


We switched our Nestle water service because Austin claimed the water tasted funny.  Turns out an estimated 30% of Nestle water jugs sold are nothing but good ol' Chinese tap water.  You don't want to drink Chinese tap water. 


To be fair, water scams happen everywhere.  The Arrowhead "artisanal" water everyone buys in California is just tap water from a large plant in Riverside that is pumped into toxic BPA plastic.  The difference is that US government has strict regulations on tap water.  It's safe to drink, for now at least. 


We switched to Watson's water.  Watson's is the only water company in China that adheres to U.S. water regulations.  It is double, sometimes triple the cost of competing brands.  We might be getting good water, or we might be paying a mint for tap water.  Who knows?  It tastes good, but then again so does lead.


On all water jugs in China there is a seal with a phone number and a 16-digit code.  You are supposed to call or log onto a site that is in all Chinese and type in the code before you drink the water.  If the code does not match a serial number in the company's database, you have been scammed.  You do not get your money or your health back.  I've tried several times to check our Watson's water online using the Fox Lingo web translator and I get no response.  The site loops and loops and keeps me wondering.


Can you imagine waiting on hold just to check whether you can drink a glass of water or have that cup of steaming coffee in your hand?  Americans take a lot for granted.  Americans are trusting.  We have the luxury of being able to trust.  Sure, some products escape the testing; the FDA, for example does not regulate household cleaners.  (You read that correctly, most are NOT safe. Stop kidding yourself that your all-purpose cleaner must be safe since it's sold in the US.)  But our air, water and food supplies are regularly tested and results are made public. 


The omnipresence of scams helps explain certain Chinese behaviors I have witnessed both here and in the United States.  I remember a Chinese man who came to our moving sale in Seattle.  He sat and examined and tested a bicycle pump we were selling for 30 minutes.  I insisted that is was in working condition; that we were only selling it because my hopelessly disorganized/undomesticated husband couldn't find his pump (that was in the garage NEXT to the bikes), so he bought another.  And another...........  My words did not make a lick of difference to this man; he ignored them and continued to pump the handle up and down, up and down, up and down, scrutinizing the gauge with each burst of air.  In the end, he offered me $1 for a $60 brand new pump.  I sent him away. 


One of my favorite cultural activities is watching the scene at the local wet market.  Chinese buy their fish live.  You pick a fish and the fishmonger thwaps it on the head and disembowels it in front of you. The Chinese typically do not buy their fish any other way.  If the fish is alive it has to be real and it has to be fresh.


I'm going to digress a moment and tell about yesterday's fish purchase.  I bought two carp (?) to steam for dinner.  My favorite fishmonger is inquiring about my children while he swings his arm to the side mid-sentence and bashes the flopping fish's head into a concrete pillar.  Some scales and fish juice splash right into my mouth.  I'm trying not to vomit as Mr. Fishmonger keeps jabbering away.  He throws the  still very much alive fish on the nastiest cutting board I've ever seen.  He is standing 4 inches deep in blood and guts and quickly adds my fishs' guts to the bilge.  He bags up my fish and hands them to me. 

I'm already traumatized for sending a fish to it's death in such a cruel fashion when, fifteen minutes later,  one of the fish begins to flop and jerk wildly.  I'm scream and hold bag at arm's length.  I've seen people walking with flopping bags but I just assumed they plopped a whole live fish into a bag.  My fish had been gutted!  I saw it gutted!  How could it be flopping?  I'm half laughing/crying and don't know what to do.  As usual, I've got a crowd of Chinese people staring at me and they are probably thinking I am Public Idiot Number One.  The fish convulses another 5 minutes until I male it back up to the apartment.  I throw the fish into the fridge and slam the door shut.

Our favorite fishmonger at the local wet market.  He has an infectious smile.  He is so happy despite being ankle deep in fish guts and working in water in below-zero temperatures.  The wet market is warehouse is not climate controlled.

I was now scarred of this fish.  I was scared to cook this fish.  I was scared to open the fridge door.  I know it sounds silly, but my heart was pounding as I gingerly opened up the bag.  I was bracing for the zombie fish to hurl itself out and devour my face.  I used a long knife to pry open the bag in case I needed to defend myself.  Defend myself against a dead (?) fish.  Once I confirmed the fish was indeed dead it cooked up very nicely.  My kids asked if I could teach Ayi to cook this every day.  Yes, that is a grand idea.  I will let her deal with zombie fish.

This Carp Fought The Good Fight.  It was darn tasty.

As I was saying, buying a live fish ensures the fish is fresh.  It also ensures that those with weak constitution or Catholic guilt consider becoming vegetarian.  Before you pick your live fish it is customary to inspect it.  The fishmonger places the fish on a plate of shallow water.  You will see a row of Chinese people looking in the fish's mouth, lifting up it's gills, poking at it's abdomen.  What the hell they are checking for I do not know.  I figure if the fish was sick it would have died long before it made the inspection plate.  Let's face it, you have to be bionic to survive the pollution/transport in China.


The Chinese will spend 20 minutes inspecting a fish before they buy it.  They spend an equal amount of time buying fruits and vegetables.  You should see how long it takes them to buy oranges.  They pick up and stare at each one, loudly reciting each's merits or demerits.  I'm like, "shit, is it orange?  Okay then, put it in my bag."


You would think with all the forgery there would be protests, backlash.  Alas, the Chinese are a patient and enduring people.

Black and Blue

 Austin took a screen shot of the Beijing AQI (Air Quality idex) on one of Beijing's 500 days.  The AQI only measures up to 500.  Seattle averages a 30 AQI.  Cigarette smoke measures 67 AQI.  The Chinese Government canceled all flights on this day as an emergency measure, however they claimed the canceled flights were "due to fog."  The Chinese Government has been jamming any "unapproved" AQI sites this past month.




I finally broke down and bought an air purifier today. If you read my post "The Canary Dies at 500" you perhaps can appreciate the magnitude of Beijing's pollution. On days when the wind is still, we cannot see our neighboring high-rise buildings and our apartment lobby is shrouded in a ghostly brown mist.  The air stinks, your hair stinks, your clothes stink, your skin stinks, your house stinks, your dog stinks.  Maybe your dog stinks anyway.  Within minutes, smoogers-- "smog boogers"-- crust up your nose and your skin responds with an angry rash.

Austin took a picture from the balcony of our Apartment.  There is another high-rise next to our building, though you can't see it due to pollution.




Living in the land of the EPA, you can't possibly imagine what I am talking about.  You want to live vicariously though us you say?  Well, here is a fun family activity:  1. Grind those Kingsford charcoal briquettes moldering on your deck to a fine dust  2. Put the coal ash on some newspaper and mist it with Lysol or whatever toxic cleaner you use to kill germs.  3.) Take the slightly damp powder into your  home.  4. Take a large fan, tilt it down on the pile.  4) Gun the fan and stand like you are model in front of a blower.  5) Feel the chlorine, arsenic, mercury, chromium, sulfur, lead and radionuclides bathing your every atom.  Inhale the eau de Beijing. 6) Cough. Hoark up a throat cocktail.  7) Celebrate by buying the whole family toxic shit from China.  Repeat.

I bought a brand new Blue Air, Model E for Extortion, Air purifier. They are so expensive I am hoping I can at least rig it up for secondary use, say, put some wheels on it some day and drive it. I've held off so long because I'm not entirely convinced air purifiers work. Years ago I read in Consumer Reports that air purifiers were garbage, a total scam. Granted, this Blue Air ain't no Sharper Image ionic tower.  It's bigger than an air conditioner.  Blue Air tells me I will get miraculous results and would they lie?  Plus, expats swear by them.

I only bought one purifier and it's for the boys' room. Austin and I are emphesyma expendable. Not even Austin's current cough--the worst he has ever had--convinced him that we need to fork over the kids' college funds to buy a second purifier.  Twelve days of coughing so hard he pukes and he is holding firm.  That's one stubborn, cheap-ass man.

I myself was hoping to dither so much on the topic that we would actually be packing to return home before I made a decision; however, it was Eli's recent "reactive lung" diagnosis that had me speed-dialing Blue Air. Reactive lung disease is a step below asthma; thankfully, he does not have the total airway closure of asthma. Instead, sickness or exposure to pollutants make his lungs swell, causing searing pain and rib-cracking coughing jags that can plague him for weeks.

Reactive Lung Disease is genetic so Eli's diagnosis was my diagnosis, 36 years after the fact. Turns out three generations of the Duncan/Tracy ladies that came prior all have inflammatory lungs. Finally my own "weak constitution" made more sense. Nobody spoke much in my family, but I do remember overhearing that my grandmother had to move from toxic Los Angeles to Tucson in the early sixties because her kids' coughing kept them out of school.  Flash to the night when I was seven and I witnessed my grandmother doubled over in her tiny kitchen coughing so badly she could barely breathe and hearing the crack of her ribs, a sound I will never forget.  My whole life I have had difficulty shaking colds.  Coughs linger for months.  I cracked two of my own ribs from hacking.

Eli rarely gets sick but when he does the fevers spike and and body-racking coughs persist well after the contagion period. The lung swelling makes a person more susceptible to pneumonia and Eli got pneumonia last year with 105 fever after ice and Tylenol.  It took us moving to Beijing to understand truly how sensitive your bodies are.  (This from a girl who vomits if she walks down the conventional household cleaner aisle in the grocery store.)  When I wake up in the morning, I can tell you what the AQI is just based on how bad my lungs hurt.

Now that we uprooted Eli and dropped him in a virtual coal mine, I am feeling totally guilty.  As our already departed expat friends said:  "You have to buy the air purifiers.  Sure, they might be rubbish, but if your kids get lung cancer in their lifetime, you're gonna blame yourself."

Right then.  1-800-BLUEAIR.  I'd like a unit for each room.  Take everything I got as collateral.  I promise I will try not to dwell on the hypocrisy of buying an air purifier that uses coal-fired electricity.

99 Bottles of Gas in My Van

At age 12, I declared myself a vegetarian because "I like cows." I donated my allowance to PETA. I cried when developers began paving over the Tucson desert, destroying coyotes' and horned-toads' natural habitat. I declared war on golf courses. (Have you heard me snort when you've asked whether I play/like golf? You're lucky I just snort--you should hear my internal excoriations.)

In short, I became a tree-hugger and for years have stubbornly clung to my self-imposed moniker, trying my best to make Greenpeace proud. In sum: I love nature and hate what human's voracious appetite for convenience/wealth is doing to it.

Until moving to China, I was been pretty pleased with my enviro cred and pretty underwhelmed by everyone else who is not on the same bus. Until our trip to Burma, I would have readily ticked off my "impressive" list of green accomplishments to anyone willing to listen.


My Erstwhile Impressive List
(Please feel free to roll your eyes and skip this)

1. We don't have a car here in Beijing.
2. I've never had air conditioning
3. I only use vinegar, baking soda and natural, biodegradable soap for ALL my cleaning needs.
4. I participate in CSA (community-supported agriculture) for my fruits and veggies. (Not true in China.) I'm not vegetarian, but I can get pretty close to it.
5. I buy organic, I buy local.
6. I never use paper towels or paper napkins, I use washable, reusable rags.
7. I never use plastic sandwich bags for kids' lunches
8. 80% of the boys' clothes/toys/books are second-hand
9. I have a clothes line and use it whenever possible.
10. I recycle and compost (even in China.)
11. My family uses public transportation whenever possible.
12. Austin rides his bike to work (I get association points for this.)
13. I use non-toxic products, like paint, and drive anything toxic to the household hazardous waste sites.
14. I gather used batteries from people so Amazon.com can recycle them.
15. I diapered my babies with cloth and washed them myself and dried them out on the line.
16. We don't even use a heater in Beijing! (We use our passive solar heating very well!)


Now, if you read this list. Ignore it. It's pathetic. Here's why:

When me moved to China, we could only take what could fit into box roughly the size of a washing machine and our checked baggage, mainly duffle bags sausaged with clothes and shoes. We had a much larger shipment coming by boat which was scheduled to arrive between 1 and six months after us.

We lived well off this one box. We did great. We were fine. We were happy. Our earthly Beijing possessions consisted mostly of Legos, kitchen utensils and children's books. We had to supplement the box with a trip to Ikea to buy bed sheets for the larger beds in our apartment, but mostly we lacked nothing and did not miss our American "stuff," aside from our bikes and my pole.

So when our sea shipment arrived I was horrified. WHAT WAS ALL THIS SHIT? And why did I feel the need to bring it? With each box that was dumped into my living room--there were 56 in all--I felt my cheeks burning hotter. It was like unwrapping a department store. It was judgment day in my own heart. I immediately began foisting items onto the movers: "Here take this!" "You want this?" "A gift from America, the world's most egregious consumers!""With love, from Macy's!"

My moment of shame was intensified by our Ayi's presence. She was there to witness my abject hedonism, my consumption addiction, my one-woman assault on our gorgeous earth. Unloading our clothes was the worst part. I cringed until I had lockjaw when she pulled out one, two, three, four, five pairs of Austin's jeans. Five pairs? This does not include all his pants. I thought all along that we were modest apparel consumers, after all our clothes fit into two tiny, circa 1930 closets. We've never had these walk-in closets that are bigger than most world denizens' living quarters or anything. Really, how irresponsible are we?

I wanted to dismiss our Ayi early, I couldn't bear the shame. I could not look her in the eye. I was thinking of how to say "you can go home now" with my two classes worth of Chinese (Ayi does not speak a word of English) when she held up a pair of jeans riddled with holes and shellacked in coal miner's patina. She asked me a question. I did not understand. She always knows when I'm confused because I bobblehead and my jaw drops open. She is sweet enough to pantomime until I understand, and acted out throwing-away-the-pants. Surely I had meant to discard them? Trashed-out jeans such as these were not suitable to wear in public.

"Oh! NO! NO! NO! Those are nice jeans! The are expensive! They are designer! We bought them with holes and grease and stains! You can't throw those........" Yep, I was speaking in English again as my most patient and intelligent Ayi carefully placed the designer jeans on the heap of other designer jeans.

I began to giggle. Then laugh. Then laugh so hard tears welled in my eyes. I felt so stupid, so hypocritical, yet I know that ayi was not judging me for my consumption. I think most humans secretly or openly aspire to reach the American standard of living. How can I tell her it's too much? I want to warn her of the pitfalls, the fact that money in many cases comes before family, before God. How can I let her know that the world cannot support an American lifestyle for everyone?


Our trip to Burma was the second proverbial slap in my ignorant face. Tree Hugger? Please. In an ivory tower, there ain't no trees.

Burma was like time traveling. Progress has passed the country entirely. The fields of Burma are still plowed by oxen, water hand-carried from wells and cars are scarce. Gasoline is purchased out of used water bottles and liquor bottles at road-side stands. I did not see a single gas station in all of Burma, not even in Yangon, the capital city.

I saw two cars outside of Yagon and the occasional tractor. There aren't yet decent paved roads. Taxis were horse-drawn in Bagan. Some enterprising Burmese take simple tractor engines and attached them to pickup truck cab to make some incredibly loud and jittery vehicles that looked comical with their exposed belts whirring and the exhaust huffing and puffing. You certainly don't need gas or oil for heating. The country is bloody hot--the cool, dry season posting temperatures in the 90s.

This will change, I give it ten years. Don't get me wrong, I want progress for the beautiful Burmese. I want everybody in this world to have access to education, healthcare, clean water and healthy food. I am just not optimistic enough to believe our earth has the resources to sustain 7 billion 3-car families.

So my youngest son Finn was studying the petrol stand under the tamarind tree when he asked: "Mommy, how many bottles would it take to fill up our mini-van in Seattle."

"About Ninety Nine." Ninety nine. Ninety-nine fucking bottles of petrol in my van. Ninety-nine bottles to haul my over-privileged family to The Children's Museum of Everett, to private swim lessons, to Remlinger Farms, to the beach, to Whole Foods, to the Science Center, to the library, to sundry parks, camping, hiking, biking.

At least I don't drive an RV.

Lost on the Innocent

The longboat dropped Eli and I off on the far reaches of Ngapali Beach. Neither of us fancied spending another minute bouncing along the Bay of Bengal in a primitive water craft. We were feeling rotten, our dizziness was punctuated only by our asses' rhythmic slamming into the hard wooden seats.

I never used to get sea sick before having kids. I'm not even sure it was sea sickness making us miserable. I was six days into my "Burmese diet," whereby all food was about as tantalizing as the dung chip I accidently ate. (The chunk of poop was disguised in my bag of pumpkin seeds. Pumpkin seeds are roasted over ox patties, imbuing them with an assy-grassy patina.) Eli was four days into the *diet* and just came off another round of Toilet Olympics and fever. We thought the sun and surf might wisk good health and appetites back into our bodies. We thought wrong.

Sickness, however, rarely stops us from adventuring. Our traveling partners, the Griffiths, called us the "Happy Barfers" after witnessing several rounds of Sheppard Boot and Rally Power. Today our malaise landed us in a itinerant fishermen's village, a long, hot walk/crawl from our hotel.


As soon as our toes touched the sand, a mob of children from the village surrounded us, staring and shrieking and giggling. I had to adjust my slipping longyi.(Longyi: a long, wrapped skirt worn by both men and women. They are cool, comfortable and good at protecting legs from mosquitos.) I untied it and the colorful woven fabric billowed in the breeze like a sail, exposing my bare legs, which sent the kids into peels of laughter. The funny white lady was now the half-naked funny white lady. At first I'm thinking, "huh? Why ya'all laughing? I'm in a swimsuit and we are on a beach. Big deal. What else are you supposed to wear on a beach?" Just then I realized I had never seen a Burmese woman swimming, much less in a bathing suit. I started laughing, imagining the fireside conversation that would ensue.


When their laughter subsided and I cinched my longyi back into place something sad happened. All the children began cupping their hands to their mouths, the universal sign asking us for food. I didn't have food, save a bag of leftover poopy pumpkin seeds that I was happy to unload. I didn't have money one me, not that I make it a habit to give out money. Dammit, I didn't even have pencils or pens I could offer up. If parents can't afford pencils or paper, their kids can't attend school, so I try to keep a stash handy for such encounters.




I'm not new to witnessing this kind of poverty. I've lived in South American and Mexico. I've seen kids glue huffing to keep their hunger at bay, blood pouring from their nostrils as the chemicals slowly and painfully destroy brain tissue. I've seen shanty towns larger than most American cities. Images of abject poverty often haunt my dreams. Confusion, guilt and helplessness at times overwhelm me even though I know these feelings don't change jack and put me in that paralyzing dark place.

Eli, on the other hand, is a novice to poverty. Sure, we've talked about it. He's seen a few pictures in National Geographic magazine. I don't want my kids growing up entitled brats. God no.
Eli has never experienced poverty like he did in this village in Myanmar. He's never seen children ask strangers for food. These kids wore rags, they were dirty, snotty and had oozing eyes. They had that look of mal-nourishment. They were the children of migrant fisherman whose parents earned less than the $3 per day per capita national average. I spend more that $3 every minute. (Add your rent or your mortgage into the equation and so do you.) There was no school in the village, no doctors, no utilities. When the catch is bad, there is nothing to eat. The boatmen told me the catch has been very bad.

I want to make it clear that Burmese poverty is not the abject poverty I've seen elsewhere. The people mostly look very happy, not desperate. I didn't see that God-When-Is-This-Suffering-Going-to-End look. But poverty is poverty and Eli inquired why the kids kept asking us for food. We talked at length about the lives of the children in a village like this one. He listened intently and added his own insight. Sometimes I think I am talking with a 45-year old man and forget he is only 7.

We continued walking along the beach in silence, me pondering what I could possibly do to improve the lives of these children, Eli scanning the shore for flotsam. We saw dead fish, flip flops, shell and coral fragments, tattered flags, anchors, plastic bags, glass, bottlecaps, even a giant horseshoe crab. Eli stopped to examine and appreciate every shore treasure, no matter how banal. The mile and a half walk would take us hours. It always does. Eli then piped up and said the unexpected, something that totally shocked me: "Mom I would love to live in this village. Every morning I could wake up and see what the ocean brings me."

I was struck by utter innocence of my son. After talking about the hardships of life in the village, he still wants to live with with the will and whims of the tide. God bless him.