THINGS I HAVE SEEN IN BEIJING

NUMBER ONE: DEAD DOGS

A woman squatting in the road next to her dead dog, her freshly dead dog, with the offending bus parked diagonally across the road, and traffic queuing in both directions, beeping, inching past her. Headlights illuminate her face and the dog. She wails. A group of policemen are trying to work out what to do. One comes over and attempts to move her, to lift her by the underarms like she’s a protestor, but she flies into a hysterical rage and bats him away and goes back to squatting.

Naturally this has a attracted a large crowd. At least 100 people stand on each side of the road, four or five deep at the centre, comparing notes, answering questions, texting each other, or just watching what happens next. What happens next is: an old woman who’s been standing in the crowd comes forward with a plastic sack. Unfortunately this sack is transparent. She places it over the dog and turns it inside out, scooping him, her, it, up in the same motion, like so many dog owners are supposed to do with their dog’s shit every day. There was a lot of blood in the bag with the dog. The old woman carried the dog to the far side of the road, and left it next to the bin, which is split in two for ‘recyclables’ and ‘other waste’.

Once the dog was gone, the hysterical woman, now just gasping out noiseless sobs, walked to my side of the road, through the crowd that parted for her, and sat on a step. The bus restarted, the police went home, and the cars drove through the puddle of blood and fur that was left on the road.