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!

Totally Sick

Getting sick in a developing country is traumatic.  Bathrooms are scarce and toilet paper is non-existent.  Forget soap or water or anything to prevent you from spreading your disease to your friends and family.  If you do manage to make it to a bathroom, you would not dare lie on the cool tile floor as you might at home because 1) you would drown in the omni-present puddle of shit sludge and 2) your face would literally be flopping into the hole-in-the-ground toilet.

Let's just say, for my blog's sake, you happen to survive long enough to be able to consult medical help.  You don't know the exact location of the nearest doctor.  (Hell, the nearest doctor might even be a shaman.) If you do find one, said doctor might not speak your language.  Once in Peru, we were at a bar somewhere outside Machu Picchu and our guide had to phone in a doctor to tend to my very delirious husband.  The doctor had a highly visible hand-gun holstered to his chest to ward off would be thieves.  My husband saw the gun and thought this man was coming to "put him down."  I doubt anyone in the civilized world would expect certain death from a house call.

Getting sick is never fun.  It's downright horrible when you are far from home.  But once again China has managed to make the whole process interesting.

Eastern and Western medicine could not be more different.  I knew this, but I really didn't understand this before moving to China.  My first encounter with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) philosophy occurred while I was chopping garlic in a morning cooking class.  Sofia, my instructor, noticed I had been yawning and asked what was wrong.  I responded I was tired and I did not have a chance to drink coffee.  Her eyes met mine with a blank stare.  She sized me up and declared that my spleen was damp.  Damp spleens cause tiredness.  (What?  You didn't know?)  If my spleen isn't damp, I am pretty sure I would be crispy-mummified.  Besides, spleens can be removed.  I know at least one spleenless survivor who did turn all Sleeping Beauty after her surgery.  Damp spleen?  I think I will just blame my husband for waking me up all night.

Fast forward to the fall when people start getting colds.  My husband and I were in Chinese class and our teacher walked in completely sausaged-out she had so many coats/scarves/hats/gloves on.  My husband and I meanwhile sat sweating balls in our T-shirts and shorts because in the fall the Chinese government turns off the AC when it is still bloody hot, especially on the 26th floor of a East/West facing office with no insulation.  I asked if she was sick and she replied that she had left the window open and therefore got sick.  I replied that she probably got sick from germs and we had to translate the words for germs and virus because she could not grasp my point.  After much discussion she tentatively offered up that maybe there are two kinds of sickness:  wind sickness and whatever-you-said-were-those-invisible-things sickness.  I think she just wanted to get on with torturing us through class.  Topic closed.

Then the Sheppard house went all Petri Dish.  We were trading a variety of cold viruses when Finn got the super-whammy stomach flu.  Three days later I was crawling between bed and the bathroom.  I could not stand up for three days, could barely eat for another 7.  I have not been that bad since Peru.  For the first time since having children, I could not physically take care of them.  Austin was worried.

During this time I remember waking up in a haze.  Our Ayi and my friend Xiao Ran were in my bedroom discussing my state.  They murmurred (all in Chinese, of course):  "What's wrong with her?"  "Why won't she get out of bed?"  "She has a fever."  "She has diarrhea."  "She must have sat on something cold.""Yes. Probably something cold."

Wait, WHAT?  If I had had strength, I would have shouted:  "Sat on something cold?  No, Finn got sick and gave it to me.  He got sick because nobody NOBODY, not even food service workers wash their hands here!  You know the last time I have seen soap and paper towels in a bathroom????!!!!! It's called germs, people!"  Instead, I just crawled past them and blew out the last few inches of my intestines and probably my damp spleen.

When I was finally well enough to take the kids to the bus stop, several ladies commented on how thin and pale I looked (Hey, by the way, I can understand Chinese now!)  I told them what was wrong and all of them scolded me for sitting on a cold surface.  A cold bench or floor, it turns out, gives you diarrhea.  I even found this apparent fact in a children's safety book so it must be true.

This comes from a child safety book published in China.  It warns that if you sit on a cold floor you will get stomach and intestinal pains and diarrhea.  It advises to sit on a pillow to prevent illness.  It says nothing of the gun on the floor, which I would presume more dangerous than diarrhea or the other cucumbery thing that is blowing cold wind.

Bullocks, I thought.  Every last bit of it.  I mean, I have done accupuncture and swear by it, but cold benches and damp spleens are the domain of the middle ages and wives tales.  Come on, at some point one has to believe in science.  And then I got to thinking.  Our Ayi is never sick.  My Chinese friends are never sick (aside from the slight one, two-day cold).  Xiao Ran does not get sick and she lives in our house.  Could it be that there is something to all this?

Naturally I set out to find  answers.  I went to my first TCM class.  I learned the basic premise of Chinese medicine is that food IS medicine and that only when you are not properly fortified, lacking sleep or exposed to too much stress or the elements will your body suffer and need special herbs to bring your body back into balance.  With about 5 more years of study I will hopefully understand the details, but the basic premise is sound.  More sound than ignoring your body's natural needs and cycles and then spending thousands of dollars on pills to "fix" it. 

I decided to put the theory to practice and made several more changes to my diet, this time crossing into the last sacred territory of MY WESTERN BREAKFAST.  Now, I make and eat bone and seaweed and mushroom broth soup for breakfast.  Yes, folks, my erstwhile delight of eating pastries and spooning Nutella has been supplanted with melted marrow.  I sip tinctures of ginger, lemon and honey. I boil pears and lychee and make my own fruit tea. (White fruits and veggies are good for the throat and lungs!)  I make sure to send the kids with as much warm food in their lunch as possible.  I bought myself this triple-fat goose coat with furry hood.  I wear a mask.  I limit my time spent in the harsh elements. I wear fuzzy slippers at home.  My ass stays clear of cold surfaces.  I GO TO BED AT 11:00 p.m.--3 hours early---so my gall bladder can recover (from what I am not sure!)

My TCM lifestyle has doubled my time spent in the kitchen and seriously cut into my Chinese study time and writing time, but I am healthy, I feel good!  I am rested.  My gall bladder is gall bladdery!  I am nourished!  I...I...I...I... Wait, am I fucking sick again? 

Hmph.  There was only one thing left to do.  Go to the freezer, eat two Haggen Daaz ice cream bars, wash them down with a Coke and get to writing this blog well into the Gall Bladder hours, that blissful time when my kids are asleep and the creative juices are flowing.  Which, reminds me of the one upside of getting sick in a developing country:  Ace new lyrics to the Diarrhea Song.  Common' sing it!!!!!:


When you're on The Great Wall and there ain't no toilet stall, diarrhea (clap clap) diarrhea (clap clap)

When you've hiked to Machu Picchu and the Shit Gods start to beat you, diarrhea (clap clap)

When you're in Thailand, your ass sounds like it's in a band, diarrhea (clap clap).

The Fragrance Fries the Cowboy Bone and Other Misunderstandings

Today marks our one-year anniversary of moving to China.  One year of fantastic adventures--both good and character building; epicurean discoveries--both tasty and traumatic; and linguistic development--both brain damaging and, well, brain damaging.

With this important milestone crossed some friends have asked "Have you given up on Chinese yet?"  Given up?  Well, no.  Has anyone ever noticed how stubborn I am?  Frankly, I plan to keep struggling through the world's most ancient of languages until I learn it.  Which may be in 10 years.  Or never.  Why the pessimism?  Because the Fragrance Fries the Cowboy Bone.

The Fragrance Fries the Cowboy Bone is the menu description of a homely soup served up at a restaurant near Austin's work.  The soup turned out to be a vile grey pile of shredded mystery animal stomach steeped in a sour juice that is a byproduct from making tofu; a soup that was a desperate invention born out of great famine and somehow still a laobeijing (old Beijing) staple.

The point is not the nose-hair curling nastiness of the soup, but rather the poetry of the description.  How could my harsh Germanic oral renderings compete with such delicacy?  I'm not even to Mary Had a Little Lamb and this humble restaurant hums the Rach 3. 

The problem is there are just too many words and too many subtleties in Chinese.  Every time I ask my dear friend and teacher Xiao Ran how to say a phrase like "take the dog for a walk" she immediately answers with 15 different choices, each more complicated and poetic than that last.  I just want to walk the fucking dog.  I don't need to whisk through the weeping willows with my glorious heavenly lion lapping at my heels.  I don't need to prance through the peonies with my princely pal protecting me.  Really I don't. 

Besides, I have bigger fish to fry.  I've got tone deafness in a world of tones.  After one year I am just starting to hear the second tone, not that I will remember when and how to use it.  (One down, three to go!) Turns out, tones are pretty important in a tonal language.  My friends leap tall mountains to try to understand me but the rest of Beijing shoots me the familiar "what the hell"  look while shouting "SHENME?????" (What??????) for all the world to witness my shame.

My favorite story of misunderstanding occurred last month when I walked into Jenny Lou's, a popular grocery store carrying foreign foods at extortionate prices.  When I crossed the threshold I heard a loud popping and sizzling sound.  I followed the noise to a corner where I saw a thick electrical cable burst into flames.  A few inches from the flames was a cardboard stand carrying newspapers (think highly combustible) and fresh flowers.  I quickly surveyed the area for a fire extinguisher and, not finding one, began to jump and shout "FIRE!!!!!!!"  Only I was off a vowel (A and O sound very similar) and used the wrong tone so I was actually jumping up and down shouting "FLOWERS!!!!!" in front of the fresh flower stand.   The cashiers and shoppers looked at me in total bewilderment:  the foreigners probably noting that they should really lobby for better mental health care in China and the Chinese silently confirming what they already know to be true:  those laowai (foreign people) are CRAZY.

I was clearly not getting the intended reaction and grew increasingly nervous because you do not **DO NOT** want to be in any burning building, especially one that was obviously not built-to-code and with highly noxious drywall.  I figured I was using the wrong tone and launched into a second tirade in second tone.  This hardly advanced my Samaritan cause as I ended up shouting "MAGNIFICENT!!!!!"  instead of FIRE!!!!.  I mean, the flowers were just okay, nothing special.  On my third try I used the third tone:  H--OO--AAH!!!! and an employee recognized it as H--OO-UUH:  FIRE!!!!!!  By then it was obvious because the smoke began to pour out from behind the newspaper stand.  A cashier grabbed an extinguisher and doused the flames, after which I stood there for a moment, perhaps ticking off another of my nine lives or perhaps waiting for a thank you that never came, and then went on my merry way to find tortillas.

So what's there left to do besides study my arse off only to be constantly misunderstood?  Well, laugh and cry a bit.  And travel.  I have one trip planned every month until we fly home.  Now that's MAGNIFICENT!!!!!!

Close Encounters with Chinese Exercise

I was chatting with my neighbor at the park.  Nice guy; a Chinese man who has spent ample time in The States.  Our kids go to school together, they ride the bus together, so on and so forth.

He inquired about our recent trips to Mongolia and Xian.  Simple enough idle banter, only it took my entire life force to string together a few intelligent sentences because my neighbor's father was next to us, bent in half and ramming his shoulder repeatedly into a Hawthorn tree.  He then began to grind the back of his neck against the tree, grunting and huffing like a yoked ox.

Me: "Xi'an.  Uh. Yes.  Uh.  Xi'an.  Yes.  Uh.  Xi'an was uh great *pause* yes,  we, um, loved Xi'an." 
Neighbor:  "How long did you stay?"
Father: "Uuuuuuhhhhhhhh."  Bam!  "Uhhhhhhhhhhhh."  Bam. "RRRRRRRRRRRUUUUUUhhhhh."
Me: "Stay?  Uh. Oh, yeah.  Xi'an.  Uh.  Yes we stayed there."

I bumbled away and my neighbor was looking at me strangely.  He must have though I was high or stupid.  Really, I was just trying to be polite and not gawk or point and laugh out loud.  In the US, such behavior is the domain of itchy bears or rutting elk or, say, folks confined to the looney bin.

I've seen many odd exercise rituals in China.  I'm used to them.  Most exercise is done outside in public so an early morning trip to a park or an evening trip to any patch of concrete large to accommodate line dancing is entertaining.  The difference is I have always seen, say, men crawling around in circles in the dirt from a safe distance--far enough to discretely oogle, lift my jaw off the ground, or laugh until I cry or pee my pants.  I've never waded in for a better look fearing it too rude or insensitive.  I really wasn't prepared for a close encounter with elk man.  I was so happy and relieved when my sobbing child extracted me from the scene.  "Oops, gotta run!  Bye!" I said and skipped off.

It's not uncommon to see people holding odd or uncomfortable positions for a long time.  My friend Mark got this great shot of a man standing on his head on concrete.

Man crawling on all fours in the park.  He does this every day at 2:00 pm. 

Another common form of exercise in Beijing is walking backwards.  Already for some--myself included--, walking backwards is a tough task.  Add to it the unevenness of pavement: craters, un-cordoned construction zones, cars driving on sidewalks, sheer ledges into cess-pit canals, and you have a downright dangerous activity!  Extra points go to people who walk backwards while slapping themselves. Gold stars to those traveling in reverse, slapping themselves and singing opera.

This kind man was playing Chinese Yo Yo.  He ran string up to the top of a pine tree and was throwing the yo-yo up the line. 

The first time I saw someone walking backwards slapping himself silly I was on a path that cut below a bridge.  It was dark under there and for once there was not a single person around.  I had the death plunge into stinky canal on my right, the 3rd ring road above my head, concrete pylons to my left and Sergeant Nutter barreling backwards towards me.  I scampered back up the path and hid behind a bush while he spanked himself up the hill.

On my way home that day I saw a man carefully wrap a eucalyptus tree with a golden swath of fabric.  He then stood a few feet from the tree and flung himself forward and up to chest-butt the tree.  He was still heaving his body at the tree when I left the park an hour later.  Trees are common exercise partners, mostly because they are there and they are free.  Come spring you will see apples and peaches and Chinese people hanging from them as they stretch their limbs or do some pull ups.

This Chinese Yo-Yo has grooves in it that make an a sound like a didgeridoo on speed. 

Now let's get this straight I am not making fun of the Chinese and their creative forms of exercise.  I think it is awesome that China is such a healthy and fit nation.  I think it is awesome that exercise is incorporated into daily life.  Nobody schedules and drives to a gym.  Gyms are a bust enterprise here in Beijing.  They come and go faster than a flash flood in the desert.  Oxygym in our complex has gone through bankruptcy several times in the last 6 years.  I'm told it is chronically empty and that most Chinese who hold gym memberships do so for bragging rights.  (Note to all derelict gym members:  your new excuse for not going to gym is you only have the membership for status!)

 You tai chi your way to work, ride your bike to the store, jian (Chinese hackey sack) on break with your buds, you slap yourself while waiting in line, ballroom dance in the plaza after dinner and che ling (Chinese yo-yo) on Saturdays in the park. Analog exercise machines encircle most playgrounds so adults can exercise while watching the kids play--brilliant!  Note to self: I should really use those machines.

This Man attached a dragon kite to his yo -yo for added WOW.

You find public exercise equipment in every park, plaza and square, not matter how small the town.  The equipment is kept clean and in good working condition.

Often times exercise equipment encircles a playground.  The adults can get exercise while the children play!  Brilliant!  I should actually try it sometime.

Rampant

Jaws is on my balcony.  Mandibulous Maximus.  And it won't leave.  It is a cricket, a giant Chinese cricket.  I hate crickets.  For some reason we have three.

Giant Chinese Cricket.  This one the boys named BIG BOY.  He is indeed large but not man-eating like Jaws.

Eli calls the main cricket in question Chomper.  Finn calls him Muncher.  I call him Kujo.  I want it dead.  It wants me dead. 

Jaws/Chomper/Muncher/Kujo is sitting on the balcony ready to pounce and kill me I just know it.  You might think this is an irrational fear, but it's not.  Kujo has dagger sharp jaws.  You come near his cage and this horrible death bug pounces to the bamboo bars like a creature out of the movie Alien.  It's not natural.

We got Jaws/Chomper /Muncher/Kujo--we'll call the beast JCMK--at the She Li He pet market in South Beijing.  She Li He is larger than a Super Walmart and sells birds and fish and turtles and chinchilla and emperor scorpions and crickets.  Lots of crickets.  There were stalls that sold nothing but crickets.  Walking by a cricket stall is like walking by Dodger stadium after a winning run is scored.  Only louder.  A winning cricket can make a sound louder than a gas-powered lawn mower. 

I say winning because cricket sports are popular in China.  Yes, you read that correctly:  cricket sports.  There are regular cricket "singing" contests.  I wondered how anyone can call the incessantly loud and annoying chirp-buzz loop singing.  Then I heard Beijing Opera. (Author looks over shoulder once again for mobile execution van.)

Cricket fighting is also popular on both legally and an extra-legally.  Legal fights are broadcast onto giant TV screens.  Illegal fights occur in back alleys.  Potential cricket champs are fed diets of duck and liver and high-quality meats.  Potential champs are trained and sometimes given cricket steroids.  Potential champs will sell for thousands of dollars, for a creature that lives at most 100 days.

JCMK is clearly a fighting cricket.  He was a gift to Eli from a man who owns a cricket stall in She Li He.  I thought at first the man gave us the cricket because he liked us.  Now I know he wants us dead. 

Cricket Stall at She Li Yuan.  Each one of those cages and balls inside and outside of the store has one large, loud cricket.  The owner has to drink beer on the job to survive it.

Well, that explains how we got one cricket.  How did we fall down the rabbit hole and end up with three?  Mea culpa, I fell in love with the little cricket cages.  They make great decorations/Christmas ornaments.  So I bought two more empty cages.  I guess my traveler's Mandarin (see blog post 10 Years) did not adequately convey that I wanted only the cages because they came complete with two more horrible, jaw-clacking buzzing demons, the first "Big Boy" the size of my hand and his compatriot "Thornback" who has a huge sword-thingy poking out of its rear-end.

They boys grabbed the cages and happily skipped away before I could even return the wicked beasts.  The thought of having these creatures in my house gave me a nervous tick.  I felt like I was licking a thousand wooden spoons at once.  My pulse quickened and my mouth started to blur with pre-vomit salivation.

Ok.  Calm down, I thought.  If you can't beat them, join them.  Okay.  I can do this.  I can embrace the cricket.  I can.  Yes I can.  I have embraced countless other bugs and mud and weapons (sort of) and boys hurling themselves off too-tall things and boys beating each other and fart contests.  Crickets should be no problem, right?

So there I sat holding BIG BOY while bouncing though Beijing in a motorcycle sidecar.  I stared at him trying to appreciate his extraordinarily delicate limbs and curious antennae and cute eyeballs.  I can do this I thought.  Yes I can. 

We brought them home and fed them lychee and cucumber and smelly melon (that's a direct translation) and carrots.  JCMK ripped the food from our hands and tore through it like a starved hyena rips at a carcass.  Then he jumped on the bars and began hissing for more.  I felt faint just being near JCMK.

The boys insisted that the crickets sleep in their room, apparently unaware that crickets don't sleep, rather they buzz loudly and furiously for mates that--in JCMK, Big Boy, and Thorn Back's cases--will never come.  The night began quiet enough.  The boys were sound asleep when we heard what we thought was a broken washing machine.  You know, the thump, thump, thump when your machine is off-balance, coupled with the squeak of a breaking fan belt.  I actually ran in to check the washing machine.  Not it.  Eli then padded out of his room: "Mom, what's that noise?"  We realized not only did we have a fighting cricket, we had a rock star. 

The next morning our Ayi (that's maid/nanny in Chinese.  Everyone has an Ayi in China.   It's, like, compulsory.) was clutching her finger and warned us that (JCMK) bites.  I decide I had to get rid of him.  The problem was how?  Austin was opposed to JCMK's disposal:  "But the boys like him!"  I reminded my dear husband that he wants to dispose of our dog, Ruby, and they like her much more than the death cricket.  I could not possibly squash the thing because I die just thinking about the crunching sound it would make.  And the guts I would have to clean.  (Blurry salivation begins.)

It turns out that our dog Ruby forced the hand. Ruby is our eight-pound wiener dog who thinks she is eighty pounds.  Or 800 pounds.  On two occasions she tried to attack a bear, a GRIZZLY bear.  JCMK was no match for Super Ruby.  She swatted down his cage and chewed it to pieces.  The only problem was that JCMK escaped.  Admist much ear-piercing screams (who knew I could scream like a girl!!!!!!!???????) Austin managed to hurl JCMK out onto the balcony and slam shut the glass sliding doors.

Ruby:  Pest or Pest Control?

Ok.  Problem solved.  Only we can never use our balcony again, at least until the death cricket leaves.  Only he won't leave.  He was happily snacking on Ruby turds--we have a doggy pee/poo pad since we live 28 floors up and can't fathom taking her for 10 walks a day.  Now I have even more reason to dislike crickets and, is that fucking cricket staring at me?

Things only got worse because I had to sleep on the couch that night.  The couch that sits in front of the glass curtain that gives way to the balcony.  That same balcony where JCMK was perched, ready to kill me.   I couldn't sleep knowing that thing was out there, but there was nowhere else to sleep.  My in-laws had the guest bedroom and Austin was running to the john every 20 minutes for a round of toilet Olympics--what's worse death by cricket or THE VAN INCIDENT**** revisited?  Close call.

Again, I had to calm myself.  Bring in the forces of reason.  Who knew fear could be so irrational?  I mantra:  "I AM BIGGER THAN THE CRICKET. I AM MORE POWERFUL THAN THE CRICKET. THE CRICKET CAN'T HURT ME."  I said this a million times until I finally dropped into sleep.

The next morning the boys were peering out onto the balcony.  They bravely stepped out to survey all the corners and confirmed that JCMK was gone.  We had released the scourge of the insect world to run rampant in Beijing.  Good riddance.

***For those of you who have never heard a Sheppard barf, it is traumatizing.  Austin had a particularly violent bout of the vomits in Myanmar in a van.  Nobody within one square mile of that van will ever forget that day.