Maya con Dios

On May 23, 2013, Maya White Hauenstein passed away.  She was 14 years old.

A picture of Maya on a California beach captures it.  She stands stocky with her chest out, proud and defiant, uninterested in the camera.  Her ears and tail are at attention, eyes fixed somewhere far down the beach, ready to chase whatever it is that needs chasing.  A thin leash extends limply in the air behind her, mocking any idea that this dog could be restrained.  The churning ocean in the background seems held back by the force of her personality.

So did Maya dominate our lives for over a decade.  She was born on May 22, 1999 on the plains of Colorado to a grand champion Samoyed named Vegas and a skittish kennel dog who apparently had a tail worth breeding for.  When Kristy picked out “Red Dog,” the runt of the litter, it was partly due to the adorable face that would coax thousands of treats from people’s meals during her lifetime, but mostly due to the fact that she walked alone on the perimeter of the play area, perhaps looking for her Daddy but certainly wanting nothing of the kids and parents picking out a family dog.  These two feisty and independent girls were made for each other.  For nearly fourteen years they would be inseparable.

In Colorado, Maya and Kristy climbed mountains, hiked through deep snow, ran on trails where rattlesnakes sunned themselves.  Independent Maya always ran ahead, but she would stop and look back just often enough to be sure Kristy followed.  It defined Maya.  She refused taming but loved Kristy with passion.  The passion she felt for “her people” radiated from big brown eyes and a mischievous smile.  Her people loved her back, maybe even more so for the flaws that passion created.

Maya never cared much for other dogs.  Her best canine friend in life was a pit bull named Minnie whom she never saw after her second birthday.  She loved Chewbacca, the patriarch of the Samoyeds in Kristy’s family home, but even he she rarely saw after moving to California in 2001.  She tolerated her aunt Samara.  Eventually she got along with Jack.  Other dogs she didn’t trust.  She ate ravenously to finish before another dog stole her meal.  Dogs who approached to greet her were met with a sideways glare, then a snap if they didn’t get the picture quickly enough.  When put in the same house as another dog, Maya would unleash a relentless display of alpha dog maneuvers until an accompanying human would get embarrassed or fed up and remedy the situation by removing one of the dogs.  Perhaps Maya never thought she was a dog.  Perhaps she was just Kristy’s best friend.

So she didn’t take kindly to Kristy leaving her to go about other activities in her life.  They call it “separation anxiety,” but Maya was never so much anxious as she was simply pissed off.  The howling and barking were one thing, the defecation quite another.  Before we figured out how she preferred to be babysat, Maya terrorized friends and family and anyone else who tried helping us.  On one occasion she thoroughly soiled my boss’s house.  When we locked her in Unk’s kitchen while we attended church, we came home to find her somehow standing on the kitchen table, staring out the window at us.  Once, while Charity cleaned poop from the corner of her bedroom, Maya jumped onto her bed and peed on her pillow.  On vacation in Mexico, I received an email from Charity with the subject line, “Puke, poop, pee.”  The body of the email simply read, “It sucks to be me.”

But when she was with Kristy she was completely in tune with her.  When Kristy was happy, Maya was happy.  When Kristy was sad, Maya clung to her to cheer her up.  When Kristy was exasperated, Maya took action.  Once in the middle of the night Kristy let Maya and Samara out to relieve themselves, but Samara wouldn’t come back to the house.  After a few minutes of rising frustration from Kristy, Maya marched out into the snow, grabbed Samara by the collar, and dragged all sixty pounds of her up the steps, across the deck, and into the house.

When I met Maya she stayed in the back of the SUV, measuring me.  But the first time I kissed Kristy in front of her, Maya pushed her face in between us and began licking both our faces.  From that day on she was my dog, too.

She was as in tune with me as she was Kristy.  At times when I would raise my voice, Maya would begin punching my shin with her front paw.  Once she had my attention she would back up, wag her tail furiously, and look up at me with that Samoyed smile until I started laughing.  One time as I sat at the computer screen I raised my voice over some dumb Al Davis move I was reading about (keep in mind the Raiders went to the Super Bowl during Maya’s lifetime), and three quick punches hit the back of my head.  I turned around to see Maya’s smiling face inches from mine as she stood leaning over the back of the couch to reach me, tail wagging at full speed.

Her enthusiasm was infectious.  The happiest I ever saw Maya was in the Sierras in the snow.  During a drive we stopped for some reason and let her out in a small field.  For a long minute she completely lost it, leaping this way and that, scooping snow in her mouth, enticing all of us to play.  It was as if pure joy had manifested from the white snow.  She was built for snow.  Sierras snow, Rockies snow, even Wisconsin snow.  She saw a lot of snow and she saw a lot of states, racking up more frequent flier miles than many people and wearing out three family vehicles criss-crossing the country.  Maya was happy when she was with us.

Her favorite place was the beach.  Crissy Field, in particular, but she loved Fort Funston, Muir Beach, Monterey, Half Moon Bay, Shell Beach – any beach, really.  The wind and the cold water energized her, and she would run up and down the beach expending that energy, always distracted by something that caught her eye.  A small dog to intimidate, a rotting seal to investigate, picnickers to charm out of whatever food they had on hand.  Maya was an intensely curious dog, a trait we always expected to get her into trouble.

In fact Maya had several cat-like traits beyond curiosity.  She was agile, pacing the 2-inch wide back of the couch or gliding under the coffee table at full speed in pursuit of another dog.  She did not “smell like a dog,” an important trait to my mother.  And she most certainly had nine lives.

How she survived her car-chasing phase we really can’t say.  Once I ran up The Embarcadero against traffic waving my arms furiously as Maya chased the Muni train and threatened to dart across the street at any moment.  Another time I made a fine tackle of a wild eyed Maya against a fence in Kingsburg.  And a terrifying sprint through a snowy field where we were stranded near Mammoth only ended when a truck rolled out of view on the lonely highway and Maya forgot what she was chasing just long enough for me to catch her.  I hate to imagine what Angie never told us happened during their off-leash adventures.

Her mistrust in dogs proved self-fulfilling when a neighbor’s ill-trained pit bull decided to make it his mission to eradicate her.  After months of banging against the garage door, he finally escaped and made a direct line for Maya.  Fur flew, but Maya miraculously avoided damage, likely because of the thickness of that fur.  But another night several months later the fur would not stop the pit bull – nor would the fireplace poker I sunk 2 inches into his back.  Once we made it inside we took inventory.  She was bleeding from where the pit bull locked his jaw on her hip, and she would spend that night in emergency surgery.  But she stared into my eyes and licked my face as I looked her over, hoping to cheer me up as she always did.

Maya’s medical history was nearly as long as her travel log.  Flea allergies, eye injuries, infections.  Recurring e-coli infections had damaged the majority of her kidneys by age seven.  None of it really slowed her down.  She lived boldly, that passion always driving her.

Nowhere was that drive more on display than her walks.  Like any dog, she loved her walks most of all.  A walk with Maya happened at full blast, the pace fast, the leash never slack.  Most walks became a battle of logistics, the walker trying to select a route to encounter the fewest dogs possible, Maya looking for any opportunity to take a longer route and extend the walk.  When she saw another dog she would bark and try to sprint in its direction, hopping on her back legs against the pull of the leash as the walker wrestled with her and hurried on out of view of the offending dog.  We tried training, treats, gentle leaders, and harnesses, stopping just short of dog hypnosis.  Only one thing ever slowed her down.  Age.

For a while it was a relief.  While we could no longer count on being pulled up hills, wrangling her became easier.  Eventually she could be held close and she wouldn’t even bark at other dogs.  As time went by we began daring to take her outside without a leash.  In her final months she never wore a leash at all.

Hip dysplasia and neuropathy had taken their toll.  This supremely agile dog who would never be tamed now often fell while pooping or went 24 hours without peeing because she couldn’t squat.  When she had to go outside I would carry her to a relatively flat patch of grass in the neighborhood where she could walk around without rolling down a hill.  She ate ravenously again, only now she wasn’t racing competing dogs, just the precious seconds before her hips gave out and she fell to the floor, unable to reach her bowl.

Her spirit never faded.  She clung to Kristy and me, reading our roller-coaster emotions, licking our faces, staring at us knowingly with those deep brown eyes.  On her final day she encountered a three-legged Chihuahua at the park and chased it, barking hoarsely and stumbling sideways all the way.  We laughed that a phrase we’d said many times had come true.  She was indeed chasing little dogs until the day she died.  When she passed away it was on a hill in San Francisco, in the sun, and she was perfect.

During Maya’s final weeks, time outside was spent patiently waiting for her to relieve herself.  We had given up walks long ago, the hips unable to make it.  Now it was all about carrying her to the right patch of grass, steadying her hips, and getting her walking so she could find a suitable spot.  Each effort could take 30 minutes, and happened at all times of the day and night.  One day after 20 minutes of trying to find a comfortable spot to pee, Maya turned and began walking away from the grass.  As she walked awkwardly to the street I followed at a distance, curious to see what she would do.  Maya turned and began walking up the steep hill we had walked so many times before.  I expected her to crash to the cement but she didn’t, and though her walk looked painful, she kept on climbing.  I stood and watched her go about 50 feet up the hill when she stopped, turned to the side, and looked back at me as if to say, “Follow me.”

More Noodles

One loyal reader of this blog requested that I keep writing. His actual words were, “Get the blog over with buddy…it’s not going to be too much fun later.” But that provides me sufficient excuse to mess around with this thing a bit longer.

I do have plenty of untold stories and observations, though they seem rather more distant than expected given the mere two-and-a-half weeks since I was fully immersed in China. Probably the high number of enormous hamburgers I’ve eaten since my return has accelerated the process of feeling fully at home in America again. But this past weekend Kristy and I decided we needed to use chopsticks and made a trip to a restaurant called Crouching Tiger in Redwood City in order to do so. I ordered dandan noodles, of course.

Writing that last sentence honestly made me start sweating from my face. The noodles were as spicy as the ones I ate at the Sichuan restaurant in Shijiazhuang, and much of our dinner conversation consisted of Kristy laughing at me while I said things like, “Oh man, these are spicy,” and “Can we get some more napkins over here?”

As previously mentioned, the food in China was mostly exceptional. It came in large doses, not suited for those with an instinct to keep eating as long as food keeps coming. This is probably why I’m convinced that I developed the beginning of a gut while there. Well, that and the bottomless tiny glass of beer with every dinner, the daily 3-pack of egg tarts, and the excess Ghirardelli chocolates my wife packed for me anticipating a client team of hundreds requiring authentic San Francisco gifts of goodwill. Had I stayed much longer I might soon have achieved my dream of developing a more convenient and fully portable snack food resting place.

Egg Tarts served with a smile daily

It’s something of a surprise that our dinners ever got started given the diversity and thoroughness of our team’s dietary restrictions. Several people cannot handle spice (I was accused of being one of them, but vehemently fought this assertion through the duration of the trip). Duli has a shellfish allergy. Two of the girls are relatively straightforward vegetarians, though apparently fish qualify as vegetables in Canada. And then one girl is what I will call an “ultra-vegetarian” simply because I don’t know what else to call her, never having attempted regularly to dine with someone who could not even eat onions or garlic. For all the work I do to pick hunks of onions and garlic out of my food I now recognize that I’m probably impacting 10% of the total.

The only restriction I put in place for myself was no dog meat, but I eventually extended this to cats after Duli, his grasp of the language apparently coming along much faster than anticipated, warned me that he recognized the symbol for cat in several dishes being grilled in the Carrefour parking lot. Later we found out it was the symbol for whichever Central Asian ethnicity was associated with that style of cooking, and there was no cat involved at all. Meanwhile, Tom made it abundantly clear that, with the exception of Duli’s allergy, everyone’s restrictions were personal choices and he refused to feel guilty if people struggled to find enough to eat in the local restaurants. As a result, some irony played out in the high frequency of visits to KFC by a subset of the group attempting to stay within the bounds of their healthy lifestyles.

One of the best meal options in China is the Hot Pot, lovingly celebrated in Mukul’s blog here. A hot pot, for those who don’t know, is a pot of boiling water into which you throw a bunch of raw food and then fish it out with chopsticks to eat. Important elements of the hot pot include the collection of stuff already simmering in the water to give it flavor and the sauces used to give the cooked food even more flavor. Well, and the food. I have categorized my hot pot experiences into three types: the community hot pot, the small table hot pot, and the personal hot pot. The community hot pot, as the name I’ve chosen implies, consists of one big “community” hot pot that sits in the middle of a table for 10 or 12 or some other relatively large number that can in good faith be labeled a community. The nefarious inventor of the community hot pot came up with a great way to start arguments, particularly among a group as picky and diverse as ours. Don’t put garlic in the water. Wait – is there shellfish in that? The meat has to go in last. That’s too many noodles. Why are you ordering more beef? YOU ARE SCALDING MY FACE!

At the other end of the spectrum is the personal hot pot, so named because each person at the table has his or her own hot pot to do with as he or she pleases. The fatal flaw in this design is its reliance on the individual’s ability to cook, which puts a significant damper on the experience for me. The other potentially more literal fatal flaw is that it puts the heating unit very close to people who may not be qualified to play with fire. At one restaurant I watched a woman lean over and light her hair on fire. I was about to congratulate her for the spot-on Michael Jackson impression when I noticed she was screaming and crying while her date was hitting her in the head with his hands and a napkin in a desperate attempt to put out the conflagration. By the time I got there with a glass of water she looked a little stressed out and more boyish than before, but uninjured.

In my experience the best hot pot is the small table hot pot, although this may have been more a function of the people around said small table, not to mention their relative lack of dietary restrictions. Apparently there is spin on the hot pot, whereby all the stuff to throw in the pot whizzes by on a conveyor belt while diners frantically grab items with chopsticks. With this invention the hot pot restaurateurs have come very close to completely automating the restaurant.

Mukul fell hard for Chinese Hot Pot

For those restaurants still employing people, ordering in China can be a challenge for those of us who barely even know how to count in Chinese. A key tool in this process is the translated menu. I had heard many stories and seen many pictures of menu translations gone horribly wrong in small town China, so I was looking forward to this aspect of the experience with great enthusiasm. Besides a few gems, such as “Trumpet She’ll Flesh,” Shijiazhuang mostly underdelivered for me. Thankfully, during our Shanghai trip we found a restaurant just off of Nanjing Road with a menu that nearly made up for it all. In addition to the famous Shanghai steamed dumplings, or xiao long bao, people dined on such dishes as “Trick Not Cut Jobs,” “Chicken Curry Piece of Land,” and that traditional favorite, “Hot Face in Three Other.” Everything we ordered was good, and when Duli didn’t die we found out that none of what we ordered had shrimp in it, either.

No comment

The Hamburglar sees a growth opportunity in China, too

Must have been what the girl with the burning hair ordered.

If you could read this you definitely would laugh

Editor's note: the fact that this blog doesn't have an ending is meant to be symbolic given that Chinese meals didn't really seem to have a very obvious ending, either. Actually, I'm proud I came up with that because in truth I sort of ran out of steam writing this one.

Enter the Wu Tang, Part Three

As Part Three begins, we still hadn’t made it to the actual Shaolin Temple. Emily, Carlos, Duli, and I had traveled many hours and kilometers (note to American readers: those are kind of like miles), and now we had a few steps left to complete the journey. The outbound journey, that is.

Duli, being single, had become enamored of Emily during the early stages of our assignment. By this time he’d decided that the feeling was not reciprocated and so hung back with me cracking jokes as we walked slowly to the Shaolin Temple. A lot of our conversation had to do with the Wu Tang Clan and Chinese language. One of the earliest phrases I learned in China was “bu yao,” or roughly “I don’t want it,” and it was always satisfying to be able to yell “boo yah!” at people and get a point across. A lot of Chinese phrases sound straight out of a rap song, but with entirely different meanings. In addition to my Shijiazhuang donut business I may also be able to carve out an opportunity by creating a Chinese-Rap crossover double entendre genre. I’m really surprised this doesn’t exist already.

At long last we entered the Shaolin Temple. I stuck a coin in an old tree, Duli burned some incense, Carlos snapped photos of Emily posing in front of temples, and the entire thing went on towards infinity like everything else in China. It’s a nice temple in a beautiful setting, and Duli took some shaky videos on his iPhone.

“I have a friend who makes Kung Fu B movies.”

“Isn’t he about 35 years behind on that one?”

“Maybe he can use some of this footage.”

“Let’s get one of me leaping out from behind that wall, then.”

The monks in the temple were not doing any Kung Fu. Mostly they were talking on cell phones. We heard later that a lot of them are actually rent-a-monks put in place for aesthetic purposes. But we did come across some older ones who, while they looked like they hadn’t done any Kung Fu in a long time, did at least chant, wave some smoke around, bang on things, and ask you not to take pictures. That felt authentic.

He heard the call

Inside the Shaolin Temple grounds

We’d seen the temple and continued walking away from our driver and Shijiazhuang. Now a number of women began swarming us to sell us these incredibly annoying cats that make a high pitched noise, apparently meant to be a meow, when you run your fingers down the string to which the cat is attached. The women were insistent. One woman came up to me while torturing her cat toy and began punching me in the chest, ordering me to buy it for 2 yuan. I started yelling “Boo Yah!” and pointing at her face repeatedly, which made me feel good but didn’t stop her. As I wrestled my way from her I asked myself who the hell would buy anything when faced with these selling tactics.

I heard Duli’s laugh before I saw him walking up to me, and then I heard a weak but still annoying meow come from the item he was holding in his hands. “This thing is great,” he said as he kept laughing.

Reluctant movie stars and their cats

Kung Fu Chicken

Eventually we began our journey back to Shijiazhuang. Our bus deposited us at a noodles place in Zhengzhou, and after dinner we dodged hectic nighttime traffic while walking through what seemed to be a pretty nice city. We narrowly avoided being run over several times and Carlos just about lost an eye when clotheslined by a low hanging wire. “Why this wire hanging here?” But we found the station.

Unlike our outbound train, the return train was a slow one with sleeper cars. Our “hard sleeper” consisted of six beds crammed three high into a narrow box. Duli and I were convinced that we’d share a unit with one of the local men who showed off their shirtless and prodigious bellies in what seemed to be a Shijiazhuang summer style. As we settled in, we found a bottle of rice wine that smelled like nail polish remover and a tube of something that thankfully turned out to be toothpaste awaiting us on the filthy table between beds. The train pulled out of the station sometime after 10 pm and would not make it to Shijiazhuang until 3 am. Tired and weary after a long day, the four of us chatted for a bit before retiring to our bunk beds.

Hard sleeper

I looked down at my feet that hung well into the aisle and, having recently seen Misery in an oddly-chosen dinner accompaniment at a Shijiazhuang restaurant, was glad there was no food cart on this train. Soon the lights were turned out and the train filled with sounds of many snoring Chinese passengers, what Carlos called the “Lotus Symphony.” Tool’s cover of No Quarter drowned out the sound via my iPod. With no real idea where the train was, and hours from Shijiazhuang, I lay there in the dark on a small, hard bed looking up at the occasional lights of a very foreign land flashing by. The world was infinite again.

Live Update

Quite a few stories are left untold, including the story of our final presentation to students at Hebei University of Economics & Business. Those stories will be told...just a little late, go figure.

Tonight was my last night in Shijiazhuang. Tomorrow we depart for Beijing and I catch a flight out of Beijing on Saturday. It's been quite an experience. Some quick observations:

• Shijiazhuang is booming. The scale of development is almost inconceivable but in a way that seems more sustainable than what I saw in Dubai last year. They build on three year plans and the city is transforming before our eyes.
• Students are students. Tom and I got to know a few of the students and they are smart and down to earth, although I never would have imagined being treated with such reverence by humans.
• The people I've met are outstanding, from my CSC teammates to the ABV team to those at the University to locals to anyone associated with Phil. Quite pleased to have a number of new friends and people welcome in San Carlos anytime.
  
• Very interesting to hear people talk about the overall climate over here. More on this later, perhaps.
• Can't say enough good things about the food, even if I did have to dodge several menu items. Nevertheless, I can't wait to have good Mexican food and a big, juicy burger.
• Does anyone want to go into the donut business with me in Shijiazhuang? The ratio of Chinese donut shops in SF to total donut shops in all of Shijiazhuang is huge.
  
• Is it rude for me to say I'm very much looking forward to the level of cleanliness to which I'm accustomed?
  

I should sleep. Stay tuned for more...

Enter the Wu Tang, Part Two

The story of our epic day trip continues where it left off, with Duli and me in our new raincoats, so thin that despite their gaudy colors they acted something like invisibility cloaks and we found ourselves inside the Shaolin complex without paying. We uncomfortably squeezed the wrong way through the turnstiles to find a place to buy tickets. Most uncomfortable of all was Carlos, who had held a mildly terrified look on his face for the last thirty minutes.

“I don’t know if I can make it,” he had said as we were winding our way into the mountains in our small bus.

“You gotta hold it. This is your first Shaolin test.”

From there his wide eyed gaze had fixed on the horizon and he focused all of his energy on not wetting himself. But now we were on the move, and he was getting desperate. “Where is bathroom in this place?” His first word was reaching ever higher notes. After running across a courtyard we were at the bathroom.

We were hacking and coughing when we could finally breathe again after leaving this gas chamber. “Oh man, that was a Shaolin test!”

Legitimately through the turnstiles again, we headed directly for the Kung Fu show that the monks put on at 2, 3, and 4 pm each day. This was such a beast of a day trip that we only arrived in time for the 3 pm show, despite having been at the Shijiazhuang train station on 4 hours sleep that morning. We chose balcony seats, settled in, and waited for the show.

Before it began, however, a tour group of middle aged Korean women swarmed the balcony. They were all around us, moving in every direction. A cacophony of “anyangs” accompanied a hectic search for seats. The women were like a swarm of bees on flowering shrubbery. They came from every direction at once, sitting, hopping up, moving to the next seat, trying to sit on our laps. Carlos and I leaned forward and used all of our size to block, but Duli wasn’t as lucky and two or three Korean women sat or stepped on him in their search. It was chaos until the emcee stepped onto stage.

When Korean women attack

He gets ice cream after this

Duli is from Boston – South Boston, to be more precise – and his accent got confused during a life spent in Sri Lanka, Dubai, Washington state, and South Boston. He is one of these guys who is already laughing when he walks up to tell you a joke, as he was the time he showed me his iPhone saying, “I think I found the place where William Hung gets his glasses.” The iPhone showed a photo of the façade of Shibang Optical in Shijiazhuang. Once, in conversation that I guess must have been about the predicted rapture, he said, “I once tried to resurrect a raccoon. Seriously.” He went on to describe the process but I’ve since completely forgotten it.

Duli is the only single guy in our group, so that makes him the most motivated to learn some Mandarin while here. In an early dinner with two of Phil’s former language teachers, Vicky and Sophie, Duli tried out one of the pickup lines he’d been practicing in hopes of getting some phone numbers. Quite a bit of laughter ensued until they were able to tell us that he’d just said, “Your telephone is beautiful.” Duli is also at least something of a Buddhist, so once the Kung Fu show was over I went with him to see some monks and offer a prayer or two.

“Duli, I forgot to bring money today.”

“Don’t worry, you’re not obligated to pay. They’re Buddhist monks.”

One of the monks was asking me to sign a book while he put beads on my wrist and a jade Buddha around my neck. Not a single signature was in anything but Chinese characters. I considered pulling out my Hao wen si business card to copy the characters before deciding what the hell and signing my name as I do on my checks. “I’m not sure what I’m committing to here.”

Duli began to drop a good amount of money into the offering bin – significantly more than we usually spend in Shijiazhuang for dinner – but it looked to me like his monk was not satisfied with this. The other monk was suggesting that I do the same. As they became more adamant it was apparent to me that we were indeed under some obligation. Duli doubled his offering and said in English, “I’ll pay for both,” which struck me as a phrase he really should have learned in Mandarin. This seemed to agitate the monks even more.

“What do we do?”

“I don’t really know. Buddhist monks aren’t supposed to make you give them money.”

“These guys know Kung Fu.”

I considered removing the jewelry and scribbling out my name, but I guessed this would infuriate them even more and might unleash fists of fury on my fragile western body. I had the Carlos look on my face when Emily walked up asking what sort of fix we’d gotten ourselves into. “I don’t have any money, and Duli paid for both of us.” Despite my lack of Chinese language skills it was clear to me that Emily didn’t make any more progress before saying, “It’s ok. Let’s go.” I was sure I had just stolen jewelry from Shaolin monks. This couldn’t be good.

Please forgive us

Duli and I decided that the best way to restore our karma would be to act out the fighting scene depicted in a large statue in front of the Kung Fu theater. This was met with rave reviews from Chinese tourists nearby, so we proceeded to take this show on the road for the rest of our trip in China.

Shaolin

Let's not act this one out, guys

Top of the World Financial Center, Shanghai - believed to be the highest Shaolin pose ever performed

Tom gets into the act on the Shanghai waterfront

Our karmic debt paid, we walked on. “What else do we need to see today?” I asked. “Umm, the Shaolin Temple?” Ah yes, a topic for Part Three.

The Great Carrefour Chase

Our trips to Carrefour had steadily increased in frequency during our stay in Shijiazhuang on account of the increasing popularity of evening team meetings with Mr. Black and Mr. Red at Club Mukul. A big supermarket in China is a little different from big supermarkets in the US. For one thing, the seafood section is significantly more “lively,” as is the veggie section where a lot of veggies are being tested, discussed, and thrown on the floor. And of course there are quite a few items that one seldom finds in US supermarkets. No, I don’t shop at 99 Ranch.

Not looking lively on this night

It's clear that the duck is giving the thumbs up under duress

One night at Carrefour, Tom and I encountered another new supermarket experience. As we contemplated what exactly might be in the Chinese jerky a woman sweeping the floors unlatched half of her facemask and began singing. She swept her way up to us and stopped, then went about finishing her song.

“What’s going on here?”

“I’m not really sure.”

So we shrugged our shoulders and enjoyed the rest of the song, which was sort of like Beijing opera only not quite as screechy and unsettling. After we said our xie xies she went back to her sweeping.

“Well, that was odd.”

“No kidding. I’m going to go look for some sweets.”

So Tom and I went our separate ways. I wandered the aisles looking at all of the packages of disgusting things I would never consider eating.

The food chain illustrated

This one appeals to a surprisingly wide demographic - both cowboys and squid

At some point I noticed something strange. A presence. I looked up to see our sweeper standing just a few feet away, staring at me. She had sidled up with her silent broom, a small pile of dirt and rubbish in front of it. Perhaps I was in her way. I stepped back to give her room to pass, but she just kept staring. Before she could launch into her next aria I decided to stop looking at the bags of feet and intestines and move on to the next aisle.

She followed. I kept walking. She kept sweeping. Down aisle seven we went, back up aisle eight. I moved faster. She swept faster. The pile of dirt was growing with the tension. Maybe it was all a coincidence, I thought as I doubled back on aisle nine. She flipped a U-turn more neatly than a Shanghai taxi and was right on my heels. I doubled back again and narrowly missed being tripped by her broom as it made a quick 180 to follow. Now I was heading for the end of the aisle and looking for Tom. I found him browsing aisle 12.

“Hey Tom!” He looked up as I blew past the end of the aisle, the sweeper following. I doubled back past aisle 12 again. “I think she’s following me!”

The next time I came past aisle 12, Tom yelled, “Maybe you’re leaking!” I then hustled down aisle 13 and up aisle 12 from the other direction, to Tom’s surprise. “Don’t bring her to me!” he pleaded. She began to sweep behind Tom as he walked in circles on aisle 12 and I high tailed it for any other aisle. But he quickly found me on the liquor aisle, where Mukul joined us.

“Mukul, something strange is happening. This woman is chasing us with her broom.”

“She sang to us.”

“Maybe she’s trying to sweep you off your feet?”

We had business to take care of on the liquor aisle, so there was an odd standoff at this point, captured in pictures below.

Trust us, Mukul, that move doesn't work

Mukul tries to draw a line in the sand

Well, this is all very uncomfortable

But it didn’t end here. The woman proceeded to check out with us, and then followed us to the parking lot. I thought I might soon become the proud owner of another very expensive book about The Great Wall, but she simply waved goodbye, perhaps disappointed to learn that we didn’t own cars.

Shall we split this one three ways?

The next day we happened to find ourselves back at the Carrefour. I was politely waving to a nice looking woman in the tea shop who was staring and waving at Tom and me when the sweeper appeared right in front of me.

“Ah!”

I understood precisely zero of the words she spoke over the next minute and a half. But then she disappeared almost as suddenly as she had appeared. When last we saw her she was not carrying a broom. We have not been back to Carrefour since.

Shopping

I hate shopping. It is without a doubt one of my least favorite things to do. All the standing around drives me crazy. Dealing with so many people gives me a headache. I feel like I’m always being ripped off, and to eliminate that feeling would require months of research that I’m not willing to do. And once I buy something I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach as if thousands of people are agreeing somewhere that I’m an idiot for spending that much on that thing.

This trip to China would seem an ideal opportunity for shopping. It’s well known that just about everything is negotiable, most of the world’s goods are produced here, and Shijiazhuang is decidedly off the tourist path. This blog’s readership is largely family and close friends who are likely excited to see what goodies I may bring home to them. Let this post properly set expectations for those people.

The intensity levels of the ridiculous anxieties I listed in the opening paragraph, like just about everything else, approach infinity in China. We recently made an excursion to the local tech mall to buy some unneeded electronics gear. The tech mall is basically a three level madhouse with thousands of booths selling all sorts of what appear to be brand name gadgets. One would think the prices would be low, but I priced some headphones and found them to be 150% the price found on Amazon. And negotiations, particularly for someone who looks like me, are arduous at best. But the previous day Mukul had gotten a pretty good package deal on a hard drive and media player, so four of us sought to replicate his success. We brought along a secret weapon – Emily – who, as a local, could undoubtedly negotiate a killer deal for us.

No, I think the on switch is over here

For some reason our entire crew showed up at the vendor to explain to Emily what we wanted. The opening price was high. We turned to Mukul who quoted his price from the previous day. The vendor reluctantly agreed, but somehow when multiplied by four it rose on a per unit basis. We were not that dumb. We then left Emily to shop around for the best price while we grabbed some food on the street.

Clouds gather at the tech mall, foreshadowing some trouble ahead in my story

Hours later we returned. The Mukul price had not changed, despite our having left the premises. Apparently the vendor was not that dumb, either. Eventually we each shelled out the Mukul price for our goodies while Mukul enjoyed a moment of smugness over his negotiating prowess. Meanwhile, by this time the shopping had gotten to me and I was feeling a bit woozy. I had just bought something I wasn’t sure I needed, had offered zero value to our negotiating efforts due to my relative lack of knowledge on the subject, it took what felt like 18 hours of standing around to accomplish, and there were literally thousands of people looking at me actually thinking, “That guy is an idiot. Let’s charge him way over American prices for what might be knock-off stuff that he has no opportunity whatsoever to return when it breaks.” I was beginning to get that awful feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Then I remembered the ice cream. I’m a sucker for ice cream. I love it. So I bought some on the street and ate it with glee. Afterwards, Tom made it clear to me that I was an idiot for making that purchase.

“Ice cream is one thing I never eat in these places. First of all, they use local water, which is never good. Second of all it’s dairy, which spoils easily.”

I bid a hasty farewell to my colleagues and began racing through the street in the direction of the hotel. My stomach was now in a knot. I flew past noisy vendors and a massive construction project to reach the main street that separated me from my toilet. To cross this 8-lane beast requires mad Frogger skills. Just when you’ve run from the buses that seem not to be equipped with brakes (the horns work brilliantly, though), you need to stand perfectly still while racing taxis straddle you, then you make a desperate dash for the center divide. If you do this right, by now you’ve joined some locals who form a perfectly straight line that moves forward like an advancing front and becomes a de facto lane divider, thankfully the one lane divider that cars tend to obey. One step out of line and you may lose a limb. Once across the street it’s easy to think the ordeal is over, only to step into the bike lane and be buzzed by twenty silent but deadly electronic scooters whose horns come on in unison as you take your first misguided step, scaring the bejeezus out of you.

This picture doesn't come anywhere close to doing it justice

I had made it. Now it was time to race the three blocks to Motel 168, but by the time I got there I’d forgotten why I was running. It turns out that the ice cream was not the problem. Shopping, as always, was the problem.

It’s fitting that I turned down an invitation from Tom to take a long walk and “maybe do some shopping” in order to write this blog. And it’s ridiculous that the above was the shorter and less interesting shopping story that I wanted to write in this post, so the story of the Great Carrefour Chase will have to be told later.

Not ice cream