Greetings from the Infirmary (2009 edition), and also Motorcycle Chickens

We've all been sick. The end.

(Just kidding.)

It has been a rough week, health-wise. John has had an upper respiratory infection and now seems to be starting down the same sort of pink-eye path that led us to sty surgery last summer. Betsy still has the same cold she's struggled since we arrived. It ebbs and flows -- some good days, some bad days -- and this time the pediatrician wanted her to try an albuterol inhaler. It has helped some, and we went back today for a follow-up ear check (fine) and another diagnosis of bronchiolitis. The good news is that she doesn't seem especially bothered by it. Tommy managed to get the worst parts of the cold from both John and Betsy, and spent Monday at home in bed. I've done my best to take care of them while keeping a safe distance from the germs, but I think that it's finally caught up with me, and just as work has hit the super-stressful stage. I'm sure we'll all survive, though. :-)

In totally unrelated news, I did get to see my first roadside "poultry market" today. Betsy and I were taking a walk after seeing the doctor, and there was a motorcycle parked on side of the road with a cage on the back, filled with chickens and pigeons. I started to say, "Oh, Betsy, look -- a chicken!" and then realized I should probably not call attention to it, because at that exact moment a customer walked up and the "proprietor" pulled one out of the cage by its feet. I immediately recalled the posters all over the doctor's office ("How YOU can help prevent bird flu!") and we moved on down the street to the DVD store. (By the time we were done at the DVD store and headed back, the chicken was dead and plucked.)

What was really funny about the motorcycle chickens was where they were located. We were walking through JinQiao, a section of Pudong that is about as close to living in the U.S. as you can get in Shanghai. Wide sidewalks, lots of green grass and trees, huge villas, and restaurants that have English menus and forks. JinQiao is where many of the big international schools are located, and many, many expats live there. The main development in JinQiao is called Green City -- it has an apartment compound similar to ours, a neighborhood of villas, and a restaurant/shopping complex. The street that serves as one of the borders of Green City is called Baihua Lu. On the Green City side, the sidewalks were clean and empty. Just across the street, the other sidewalk was shoulder-to-shoulder with vendors on bikes and tow carts -- plant and vendors, fruit and vegetable vendors, and the motorcycle chickens.

I'm willing to bet that at least some of the expats inside the Green City walls would be surprised to learn that when they send their ayis out to get chicken for dinner, the ayis are going just around the block and picking the best one off the side of the road. As for me, I choose to believe that the chicken I order from the import grocery store (boneless skinless chicken breasts in cellophane, as I've said before, the way God and HEB intended) is coming from a regulated source, and not from a cage mounted on the back of a Suzuki. Denial and Purell are the keys to survival here. :-)