Puppy

The other day I was having lunch at the little hole in the wall place off campus, the one where the cook has a cigarette hanging out of his mouth at all times. Well, they have gotten a puppy, a cute little bugger. He kept wandering out where the tables were, begging for food from the patrons, and the owner kept shooing him back where he belonged: in the kitchen. Now, my Western mind thinks a public restaurant kitchen is no place for a dog, but the living-in-China part of me knows the food is cooked at such high temperature, there's little chance of me getting sick.

I wonder if I will miss dogs in the kitchen when I return to America. Really, he is a cute puppy.

By the way, many of these places are family owned and children stay with their parents all day before they start school, so the children spend their early years surrounded by the dirt and grease and grime and germs. I have a theory that if we ever do have a plague, cockroaches and Chinese kids are going to survive. They have got to be immune to every germ imaginable.