Walking the Dog With a Knife in My Head

The Clean Air Pair.  The author and her husband go as air purifiers for Halloween in 2012.  Non-Scary Costumes are no longer allowed in the Sheppard household.

I love celebrating different cultural traditions, provided they do not involve burning people at the stake or, say, shooting M-16's into the air.  Here in Beijing I happily blaze and kerpow!!! through crates of gunpowder to trick the Jade God at Chinese New Year.  I roll out and wolf down plates of dumplings   with glee during the Moon Festival (Mooncakes: not so much.) We even wear special red (protective!) underwear during our astrological year.

I also love sharing American cultural traditions with Beijingers.  Halloween is a Sheppard household specialty, second only to St. Patrick's Day.   And we get right proper with our celebratory tactics.  The point of Halloween, you see, is to frighten away all the demons from the earth; send them right back to the moldering holes from whence they came.  Halloween costumes therefore MUST be scary; princesses need not apply.   Halloween also must be celebrated on the actual day.  We don't wanna hear no bullocks about it being a school night.

Prior to my children growing up and having large and LOUD opinions, I figured funny costumes would pass muster at Halloween.  I gave myself ten kinds of kudos for our "Clean Air Pair" costumes last year.  Weren't we clever being air purifiers in world's dirtiest city!  Come on, I had a cloud of back soot emitting from our butts.  Our tag line was: "cleaning the air using fossil fuels."  Funny right?  Not to my then 8-year old.  "That's not scary at all. Mom."  He said while heaving his shoulders in utter defeat.  In his mind, he is doing the world a favor by dressing up as ghoulish as possible.  It is a duty and people should thank him.  It took me a while to come on board, but you gotta admit kid does have a point.

My kids' 2013 Halloween Costumes.

So here I am in 2013 totally working this scary bit, and it's Halloween and it's time to take Ruby our dog-come-vampire-bat out for a walk.  I grab a leash, the poop bags and, naturally, my giant head knife.  You must understand that Halloween is not celebrated in China aside from the occasional foreigner--who incidentally make up less than .01% of the total population, many of whom are not American or British and therefore do not celebrate the holiday at all.  I guarantee more Chinese know the exact acreage of the Louisiana Purchase than know about Halloween.


I head to the public park along the riverside, the park that is crowded with retirees line dancing, hoarking, doing tai chi, ramming their chests into trees or belting out arias while slapping themselves, with a knife through my head.  The usual happened:  people stared at me, but it was the same you-are-a-foreigner stare, not the HOLY SHIT!  YOU HAVE A KNIFE THROUGH YOUR HEAD!!!!!!!! ogle.

Author at 8:00 am, trolling Beijing with a bloody knife through her head.

A couple finally approached me......and asked what kind of dog I had.   Another group of dog walkers stopped to check out the "hot sausage" (translation for dachshund).  I figured since I had an audience I would totally educate them on our Halloween tradition. (In Chinese, of course).

Me: "It's Halloween today," I said.

Toothless Man in Group:  Pointing to our apartments.  "Do you live there?"

Me:  "Yes."

Toothless Man: "How much rent do you pay?"

Me:  "A Lot."

Toothless Man's Wife:  "2,000 yuan a month?"

Me:  "No, 22,000 a month.  Hey!  I have a knife in my head!!!"

Toothless Man:  "Are you crazy to pay that much?"

Me.  "Crazy, yes.  You want to see my kids?"  Shows the group a picture of kids dressed in their totally horrid costumes.  Crowd gathers and squints at my cell phone.  Silence ensues as they pass my phone around.

Mao-Suited Man in Group:  "How much does your husband make?"

Me: "Um, I don't know."

Woman dressed for the Next Ice Age:  "Why do you have two kids?  Do you have the One Child Policy in your country?

Mao-Suited Man:  Shouting.  "How do you not know what your husband makes????????"

Me:  "In America we are allowed to have up to 100 kids."

Ice Age Woman:  "Oh, that's good."

Me:  Suppressing a desire to start screaming:  "Call 110, I have a knife in my head!!!!!!!" Sighs and says: "Um. Ok. Happy Halloween, everyone!"

So went my great Halloween Education Campaign.  It fell flatter than a mooncake under a steamroller. I spent the rest of the day wearing my knife and China spent the rest of the day ignoring me.

One friend saw the three of us carousing about and shook her head.  "I don't like this tradition.  I don't understand why you have to look so scary.  It is certainly not OUR tradition."  Huh?  What?  Shenme?  "Have you been in a Buddhist temple lately?  Those statues and paintings make Halloween look like the Easter Bunny!"

"What's the Easter Bunny?"

Oh, nevermind.  Got any fire crackers?

Fortune Fishies

Naming him Frankenfish was not exactly becoming or fair to the very creature who ushered economic prosperity into the Sheppard household.  The kids being kids--well, at least being MY twisted kids-- were astounded and mesmerized that he died  **twice**  and could think of no more suitable a name.

We came home with Frankenfish, formerly known as Sneaker, and his sidekick (name forgotten!) a year ago, about the same time our tadpoles grew their feet and the crickets tried to kill us.  (See Rampant for more on the crickets.)   Eli was gold fishing at Side Park, a popular popular pastime in China.  For a few kuai, you get a rusty stick with a rusty hook and a blob of this paste that looks and smells like shit.  You jab your stick into this cess pool and see if you can spear something out of the muck.  This my friends is urban fishing, Beijing style.

Eli harpooned something with a vague shimmer of fish scales.  It was bleeding from the large puncture wound.  He immediately speared a second--these fish must be hungry!  More blood.  The toothless park attendant placed the perforated fish into a flimsy plastic bag and laddeled in some raw sewage.  "Here mom!" Eli shouted as he ran off to climb some off-limits rock formation.  Once again I was stuck holding the bag.

The author stuck holding the bag, only this time the fish came from clean and blessed temple water.

I couldn't bear to look at the mutilated fish struggling through the bilge.  Poor things.  Did I really just support the Chinese goldfish industry?  And why does such an industry exist?  Well, it all has to do with a lovely but extremely complicated language.  The word for fish in Chinese is Yu.  It is pronounced in the second tone, which incidentally took me an entire year to even audibly distinguish from the other indistinguishable tones.  The fish "yu" (second tone) is a homonym for surplus "yu" (second tone), so fish have come to represent wealth-a-plenty.  Why the gold fish is particularly auspicious goes without saying.

The fish symbol is found everywhere in China.  The word fish and surplus are homonyms in the Chinese Language.

Here a man dances with two gold fish in a plastic bottle on his head.

Eli scampered off the rocks and we took our fish home and I placed them in a large Pyrex mixing bowl filled with Beijing tap water, which is arguably not much different from raw sewage.  The fish were still alive but I figured they would be dead by the morning.  They weren't.  A week passed: still alive.  Then another and another: alive.   After a few months, I gathered they were gonna hang around a while so I decided to upgrade their bowl; I even give them a plant and a little porcelain cave thingy. 

I grew to rather like the fish, but I did not spend my days pondering them or, say, writing poetry about them.  Sometimes I just plain forgot about them.  For weeks.  We travel a lot and I never thought to get the fish fish-sitters.  They even survived our nine-day trip to Japan, snacking on their own feces I presume.

So a year goes by and Sneaker and Shit, What's His Name? are looking up at me from the bowl while I affix Ruby's leash.  Suddenly I felt this deep and profound connection with them.  I felt responsible.  I begin to worry about their health and safety.  I even gave Shit, What's His Name a real name that I promptly forgot.  When it was time to embark on an 11-day trip to Yunnan, I arranged for a fish sitter.  

I carefully placed the fish in a lidded glass jar and transported them 28 floors down, across a city block and up 17 flights to the Girrer family apartment.  Their time at the Girrer household was uneventful and they were returned safely in the same lidded jar that, in the hustle and bustle of one set of friends leaving and another arriving that same day, was left sealed.  That's right: I forgot--FORGOT--to take the fish out of the tiny, sealed container and put them into their spacious and bowl with, you know, OXYGEN.

I awoke the next morning with Eli announcing that Sneaker was not moving or breathing.  What?  WHAT????  OH SHIT I FORGOT TO TAKE THEM OUT OF THE JAR!!!!!!!!!!  I shot out of bed to confirm the coroner's report.  Indeed, Sneaker was not moving or breathing.  A few minutes passed and still no signs of life.  Shit, What's His Name also looked poorly.  I immediately filled their regular bowl with water and tossed them in.  Perhaps the oxygen infusion could save/revive them.  

Proof I don't make this up.  This is Sneaker, belly up.  I first accidentally suffocated him and then I accidentally cooked him.

It might have saved both, had I not dumped them into HOT water.  In my haste, I filled the bowl with hot tap water.  (The water in our apartment rarely comes out at the temperature indicated by the tap.) Freakin' fantastic.  First I suffocated my fish, then I cooked them.

I poured in colder water and Shit! What's His Name looked shocked but resumed breathing.  Sneaker was still stone-cold dead.  My heart sank.  I did not just kill a fish, I killed our surplus.  I killed plenty.  We have worked so hard and have been so blessed, simply to end up flushing it all down the toilet.  In much the same way I worry about the dampness of my spleen (See Totally Sick blog) I spent the day worrying about money and the family finances. Am I turning Chinese? 

I didn't actually flush Sneaker down the toilet.  I could not bring myself to do it so I left him in the bowl.  Sneaker deserved a proper burial.  Funeral rites would be performed later that day, after Paige and I wandered Beijing's Hutongs.  We had a wonderful day, ending with turtles on beer cans on a busy street,

Turtles perched on beer cans to prevent swift escape into the busy Beijing street.

but the thought I had ruined the Sheppard family for generations to come kept yanking the emergency lever in my amigdala, otherwise know as the the worry command center of my brain.

We walked in the front door to the apartment where the fish bowl is located to ensure surplus enters the house (feng shui!)  I was afraid to look, yet I held this strange hope that somehow Sneaker would be alive, that somehow I had not suffocated and then cooked him that morning.  Then I peaked in the bowl and saw one, two TWO TWO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! fish swimming!  TWO FISH SWIMMING!!!!!!!  Sneaker was back from the dead!  I shouted out with joy and began jumping up and down.  "He's alive!  I have not ruined us!!!!"  I felt truly and deeply happy.  I felt truly and deeply relieved.    Paige, the kids and I laughed, we watched him, we took pictures.  The boys renamed him Frankenfish.

We were huddled around the bowl when Austin walked in the door.  "Sneaker is ALLLLiiiiiiive!"  I proclaimed.  He came back to life!!!!!!!!!!!  Austin who had a strange look on his face responded: "he waited for me to bring big news from work." Me: "What news? Austin: "I got the promotion."

THE PROMOTION.  The promotion that Austin has been waiting 3 years to get.  The same promotion whose lack of receipt prompted us to move to China.  The very same promotion that inexplicably eluded a man with enormous intelligence, talent and work ethic (too much work ethic, mind you) until the fateful day we brought home a bag of sewage filled with PLENTY.

More screams of joy and celebration ensued and we noticed Frankenfish began to list to one side.  Then he flipped over completely and was struggling to swim.  We tried to gently upright him but he kept flopping upside down.  Within hours Frankenfish was dead.  Again.  It was as if he came back to life to bring our family a miracle.  And then he was done.  His work in this world as a fortune fish was complete.  Rest in Peace, Frankenfish.  And thank you.

We replaced Sneaker with a new fish from the Fragrant Hills Temple.  Netting fish from a temple is a kinder, gentler way of obtaining plenty.

HISSSSSSSSSSS

It's 2013, Year of the Snake on the Chinese Lunar Calendar.  I am a rabbit.  According to China's top astrologer, Alvin Ang, rabbits are fucked.

I'm not terribly superstitious, but I can't help but thinking Mr. Ang's soothsaying is right on the money as we are clattering down the Beijing Shanghai South Expressway in a circa 1995 Buick station wagon, and I am peering over the back seat looking for flashing police lights because we just escaped--you read that correctly--ESCAPED--from a whole contingent of gun-toting police who stopped me for DWF (Driving While Foreign, or rather DAWF-- driven around while foreign) and were about to put my passport-less ass into a holding cell.

It was not really my intention to escape.  It just sort of happened.  The boys and I were returning home from the Lang Fang School for the Handicapped in Hebei Province, where we had spent the entire day with 8 other wonderful volunteers building a library for the school.  We braved a Level 9 sandstorm--10 uproots trees-- that blew out the glass doors of the school and the worst pollution I have ever experienced--Beijing's toxic cloud drifts south adding to Hebei's coal-fired factory scrum-- to create this amazing space for kids to dream and learn.

I was feeling snugly wrapped in my good karma blanket when we came upon a police checkpoint.  There a  plenty of checkpoints in China; I've only seen one in actual operation.  I've seen policeman mannequins at checkpoints, but rarely, you know: real police.  I suspect they are all sleeping at their desks or playing ping pong or playing Fruit Ninja on their phones.  (No joke.)

We get pulled over and I immediately note that these uniformed me are a different kind of police because they have large guns.  Guns are outlawed in China; not even the civilian police can carry.  One unusually thick police man raps his knuckles on the back window and points to me.  The driver rolls down his window and Officer IHATEYOURASS starts barking at me.  I pretend I don't understand but I get every word.

Officer:  "What are these foreigners doing in the car?"

Driver:  "I'm driving them home."

Officer:  "Where do they live?"

Driver:  "Beijing."

Officer: "They are going to need to show proof of address and passports if they want to return. Tell them!"

Driver: "I can't translate.  I don't speak English."

Officer: "You don't speak English???????"  He looks at me and yells so hard spittle hits my window "You understand me?"

Me: Blank stare.  Shrug Shoulders.

Officer:  (to other officers) "Can anyone translate?"  I see heads shaking.  (to driver) "Park over there and take them into the detention center."

At this point my cortisol level explodes and I start seeing flashing lights behind my eyelids.  I think I might throw-up because I did not bring any of our passports.  I always bring them for longer trips on planes and tranes and even buses, but I did not think to take them to a place an hour away.  Honestly, I was preoccupied with the details of hauling large boxes of books down from the 28th floor and loading the car in a sand storm with two children in tow.  Bringing passports was not on my mental checklist.  Besides, from personal experience, carrying around one's passport everyday invites loss or theft or, um, damage by washing machine.

The driver looks at me and I say "Zou ba," meaning let's go. "Ba" is a suggestion not a command.  He seemed surprised and repeated the phrase.  Then he drove forward towards the parking area but vered right back onto the freeway instead.

Me: "Uh?  What are you doing?"

Driver: "You told me to go."

He thought I was telling him to leave--as in escape-- when in reality I was just telling him to go park so I could surrender quietly.  The chase scene from Heat started playing in my head and I felt my bowels vulcanizing   My kids are sitting there playing Plants Vs. Zombies on my Kindle, totally clueless to the fact that the car is about to be swiss cheesed by bullets.  I instinctively sink down in my seat and peer through the space below the headrest.  If we did manage to survive this, I had another problem.  My husband is in India and I have no way to reach him.  He has the numbers of people I can contact if I ever, say, find myself in a Chinese prison.

I keep peering back but the anticipated police chase has not initiated.  Now I am doubly confused because I am a fugitive and nobody is looking for me.  I whistle out a half-sigh of relief until I see signs for another police check point ahead and I swallow some vomit.  Surely, SURELY Officer IHATEYOURASS has just called ahead and they will be waiting for us with their mobile execution van.   However, we pass through the checkpoint and the officers are not even looking at us because they are all arguing about something--maybe how they were going to execute us when we arrived.

We continue another 20 minutes without any cop cars tailing us so I begin to laugh and hiccup and cry a little.  For the first time the kids looked up from their game, puzzled by my hyperventilated giggles.  I just hugged them.  I felt some relief, but I had a huge headache that lasted through the night.  I couldn't shake the feeling that I would get a knock on the door.  I woke up in terror several times last night.

As I type this I realize that our detention/escape is the third bowel liquefying incident since the start of the Chinese New Year.  Mr. Ang is right: I think I better stay home for a while.(*)


*Sheppard definition of staying home a "while" = 10 days.  We are going to Yunnan in two weeks!