Tuesday, October 28, 2008

The China I Know

Next to my office there’s a small walkway, underneath the air conditioning units.  Next to this walkway is a fence separating our area from the courtyard that I can see from my office window.  There’s a big pine tree on the other side of the fence.

One day I noticed an enormous dog turd, like Great Dane sized.  I thought this was odd because large dogs are banned inside the city limits, you can only have irritating yapping lapdogs.  (I saw an enormous husky in Hohai one night, and that was the biggest dog I’ve seen in the year that I’ve been here.) The size of this dog turd was kinda remarkable.

A couple of weeks later I noticed there were a few more dog turds there, and next to them were these white things.  Upon closer inspection they were wads of toilet paper.  Which do you think is more likely, some disgusting Chinese peasant was taking a shit behind the tree, or someone trained their Great Dane to wipe its ass?

This, my friends, is China as you can only experience it by living here.