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.