Every time I saw a chicken in China, which was about as often as days ended in “Y” (or, in Chinese, when they began with shinchee), I would take a moment to observe it with bemused glee. With Aunt Fong, I would point out the bird and tell her, “Look at that! That chicken is strutting around the parking lot like he owns it!”
Or I’d ask, “What’s that chicken doing in the street?” She never understood much of my words, but she definitely grasped my bewilderment at seeing live chickens walking around parks and sidewalks, or tied by the foot to a cage on the street.
“Yes,” she would laugh, “chicken.”
Well, knowing that I had a fascination with all the filthy street fowls in her country, Aunt Fong called up a friend of hers and arranged us a visit to her chicken farm. So, one Saturday in November, a couple Chinese men came by in a pick-up truck and drove us through the criss-crossed residential streets of the city, then onto the high-speed roads and into an industrial zone at the very outskirts of town. Either we were going to be kidnapped in a factory warehouse, I thought, or escorted to a small farm property that was dumped next to the warehouse. Luckily, we made it to the latter. I could never be sure in China. In a foreign culture and language, my only option in new, strange situations was to wait and see.
My mental vision of a chicken farm had been formed by images of American farms with long, white-roofed buildings housing thousands of overstuffed hens in small cages. That idea was nothing like this Chinese chicken farm. This was a chicken paradise. On the steep, gravel ascent up to the farmhouse, in the ravines sloping down from the road, on the cinder blocks and assorted debris filling the valley, in the open spaces around the farmhouse, on top of the farmhouse itself, in, on, and around the chicken coops, and throughout the woods behind the property: chickens, chickens, chickens. This place was to chickens as China was to people. A variety of tawny, dapple-gray, white, and rust-colored birds swarmed over the landscape, with roosters issuing calls in a never-ending chain. I have no idea how those chicken farmers ever got a full-night’s sleep. Or, how they ever went into town without filling up every interior space they entered with foul chicken stench.
Chickens for sale on a commercial street.
We had some time before lunch (in China, going to someone’s house is a big invitation, and a meal is expected), so I explored the grounds of the chicken farm and curiously examined all the nooks and crannies these birds had staked out for roosting. I don’t know what those chickens did with themselves besides gawk about all day from one place to another. But I saw the way they timidly gave way to me, and I knew what I was going to do with myself.
At first, I walked confidently forward, thinking a straggler would fall behind the crowd and fail to notice me. But chickens had to earn the reputation of being chicken, and as soon as I made way for a group they lived up to their name, clucking in panic and flapping away as fast as their dumpy bodies could carry them. I picked up speed and changed strategies. I would make for the flock but furtively keep my eyes on one lollygagger off to the side. Then I would break hard left or right, stoop low, and pump my legs in pursuit of my quarry. I tried this tactic out several times, working up a light sweat in the cold, fall air. It was no use though. The birds’ caution and quickness outdid my cunning and foot speed.
One time, I backed a few chickens into some netting. Most shot right back out as fast as they had pressed into it, but one stumbled and struggled to get back to its feet. Pinned underneath the netting, it panicked, trying to flap itself upright, and it clucked such a racket that I felt sorry for it. In my brief moment of hesitation, the chicken was up again, and it doubled back out and around the net, evading my grasp. Although I aimed on catching one of them, I had to fearfully compel myself forward because I had no idea if chickens would bite at me or scratch me when I tried to pick them up. My grandmother used to tell me that chickens were mean and they sometimes pecked at her when she gathered eggs as a child. But I didn’t gather any chickens that morning, and after many fruitless pursuits, it was time for lunch.
Country cookin’ in China (at a different farmhouse than the chicken farm).
I got to enjoy lunch at a couple different farmhouses in China, and the experience was about the same at each. The house itself was a simple, rectangular structure made of concrete blocks. The inside was partitioned into rooms that were separated by lengthwise walls, meaning people couldn’t walk between rooms inside- doors had to be entered from outside. Furnishings were at a bare minimum. They had beds and a large dinner table with stools, and a desk and a cabinet, maybe, but nothing on the walls or on the floor to soften the cold look of concrete. Maybe a Chinese calendar or a red paper symbol for “blessing” on the front door.
The farm houses I visited reminded me of my Boy Scout days, camping in a meagerly equipped shelter or cabin. Outside blended in with inside and the tools and accommodations inside were for function, not comfort. Dinner itself was like most of the other home-cooked meals I had in China. Cold meat dishes with bone in every chopped-up bite, and plates of limp vegetables swimming in oil. After the customary nap after lunch (the farm family offered me one of their beds to sleep on), Aunt Fong roused me awake to head back home.
But before we left, I watched as two workers fed the chickens with scoops of seed from a big barrel. The chickens were no longer shy, and when a few of the more audacious birds hopped up near the mouth of the barrel, the workers grabbed them around their ankles and tossed them aside, flapping to the ground. The one worker knew I wanted to hold one of the chickens, so after he seized one by the wings, he called me over and handed it off to me. Then, a moment later, he was clutching another, and so he transferred that one to my other hand. With one pinched by the wings and one by the feet, I held onto the chickens firmly as they flapped and struggled, and when they settled down for a moment Aunt Fong took my picture. Their behavior when I held them was like what I saw from the chickens and ducks in the street markets. Whether they were bound by the ankles or being carried upside-down, they would occasionally jerk to try and right themselves or get free, but mostly they just held still, resigned to being held in an awkward position as they looked around at everyone from an inverted angle.
I’m looking very drowsy after just having woken up from my post-lunch nap.
As a special treat, the farm owner gave us a live chicken, packed in a box, to take home.
Back at Aunt Fong’s apartment, on the ninth floor of her building, she took some red, plastic string and tied one end to the chicken’s leg and one end to the handrail in the stairwell. I had a Sanda (kickboxing) workout that evening, so I got my gym bag ready, amusingly watched my new pet chicken roosting on the stairs, then took the elevator down and ran to practice. Aunt Fong picked me up around 8:00, and when we made it back to her apartment building, I stepped out on the ninth floor and expected to find my chicken. It was gone and so was the red string.
“Where’s my chicken?” I asked.
Aunt Fong conveyed that her husband didn’t abide with having a chicken in the stairway. Anything goes in China, but people still have their personal preferences. Aunt Fong laughed and told me to, “Ask Uncle Jiang:
‘Where’s my chicken?’”
I never did learn what happened to my pet chicken. I don’t think we ate it. I assumed Uncle Jiang either gave it to someone or let it loose to roam outside with the other feral chickens in the apartment complex. Yes, wandering chickens were a not uncommon sight in the apartment complexes of China, as well as the other spaces of the towns and small cities. Live, vagrant chickens were just a fact of life that none of the natives seemed to care about. The only thing they seemed to take notice of was the delight I had in spotting chickens in strange places. To them, it was nothing. Those places weren’t strange. Why did this foreigner care so much about chickens?
Chickens with red, plastic strings around their ankles.
From then on, every time I saw a chicken with a red, plastic string knotted around its ankle, I would point it out to Aunt Fong and say, “Maybe that’s my chicken!”
She would laugh and tell me again, “Ask Uncle Jiang: ‘Where’s my chicken?’”
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