Timmy The Wonder Fish

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The topic of today's blog is...well....odd. So, strap yourself in for a fun tale fit for "Ripley's Believe It Or Not."

My host family seems to have a love affair with fish. That doesn't mean they take particularly good care of them or anything, just that they are everywhere. In my house there are two tanks....one in the kitchen and one in the host father/brother's room. In their other apartment there is also a giant tank. This being said, since my arrival several of them have been flushed over to the "toilet bowl in the sky" with little or no fanfare.

Recently some of the giant goldfish in the kitchen had been moved to cozier accomodations in order to make more room on the counter. The large tank was disposed of, and the four less than svelt fish were a little more cramped in a bowl. This did however make more room for the microwave, rice cooker, and water purifier on the counter.

And now begins the weird....one evening last week one of the fish starts messing with my head. Paranoid you say? Not exactly, hear me out. One of fish starts swimming upside down. A sure sign it did not have much left to go...I yell something to the effect of "Oh my god, this fish is almost dead, come take a look!" So my host father comes over, taps on the glass, and sure enough the fish turns over and resumes its swimming. The second he left, the fish gurgles a bubble (as if to laugh at me) and resumes the back stroke. Well, it wasn't a total loss...I learned how to say dead fish in Chinese.

So, this back and forth mockery continues for a couple of days until one day there were only 3 fish in the tank when I got home instead of the usual four. "What happened to the other fish? Did it die?" I asked. "No," my host father said. "He's in another tank." I looked around. There was no other tank in sight. I figured this was his way to let me down easy. You know, similar to telling a little kid that his dog was "at a farm" when in fact it was dead. To make sure I was totally understood I repeated my query in Chinese, using the words for dead fish. I got the same answer.

OOOOOkay.....I decided to go with it...really of course knowing the fish was dead. Sure enough two days later there were four fish in the tank when I awoke. "Is this the other fish?" I asked, very confused...."Yes," said my host father. He explained that he had given it a pill. A fish pill? What? Was it worth it? He had bragged that the fish only cost 2 Yuan (25 cents). So I asked where one got a fish pill. "I don't know," he said. What? How could he not know. Where did the pill come from? Miscommunication like this is common in my house. I decided not to push further and to just accept the very confusing nature of this story. That was until today...

I couldn't let it go...so as I looked over at the tank at dinner I asked again about the mystery. This time I got my answer. As it turns out, my host father had decided to try an experiment...he took human cold medicine....ground up the pill and put it in the water....long story short....the fish made it. So now...in addition to knowing the word for dead fish...I now know the word for miracle in Chinese.

Next entry will feature the very fun birthday party thrown for me by my students. Stay tuned!

Until next time,
Brett

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