The other day I was outside Josh and Adam’s dorm. They invited me in to see a friendly little creature living in their bathroom. “Xiao Pang” (Little fatty) was his name. He was a giant crab (almost the size of a hamburger with legs) that they bought at the Supermarket earlier that day. The next day Adam came home to his apartment, and just before he walked in, the cleaning lady that stops by the apartments yelled to him from down the hall. This was their conversation (in Chinese of course)
Lady: Hey! What’s that crab doing in your bathroom?! It scared me half to death when I walked in there and you’re not supposed to have pets!
Adam: That’s not a pet, it’s our 晚餐 (wan can)(dinner)
Lady: Wan can?! How are you planning to cook that?! (We don’t have stoves or ovens in our dorms)
Adam: Microwave.
Lady: Microwave!? Your going to cook it in the microwave!?
Adam: What can I say? I like fresh food. Suppose that I didn’t want to eat it until Monday or Tuesday of next week though, how do you think I can keep that alive?
And the lady then explained to Adam how he could keep it alive and that they should keep him in a little water in the sink because if he dried out then he could die. Well, anyway, later that night, Tina, Kayli and I were going to the supermarket, and so Adam and Josh asked us to pick up another crab, as long as it was under 6 kuai, and they would pay us for it. So, we picked out the most gross looking, hairy crab, thinking we would play some awesome prank on Josh and Adam with it. Well, the worker at the store double bagged it for us, put the price on it, and we walked toward the check out stand with our new friend. Success! Then we looked down at the price…
“37 kuai!!?” What the! Do we have to still pay for this? Will the crab worker let us give it back even if it's already been bagged? Who would have thought a crab would be such a delicacy!?
So, we walked back over to the crab worker. I held up the bag with the crab and tried to explain myself for a minute as I muttered my thoughts in Chinese, nervously hoping he would take the 37 kuai crab back. “Wo jue de (I thought)…zhe ge pian yi (this cheaper)…ummm….wo bu zhi dao (I don’t know)…maybe a different one…”
He stared at me, wondering what the heck I was trying to do, and then I handed him the bag and said…
“Wo bu yao.” (I don’t want it)
Crab worker: “Oh! Mei shi, mei shi” (no problem, no problem)
He took the crab right back with a smile, no problem. Phew. I should have just said “I don’t want it” in the first place. So we went home crabless, but it was a great adventure. Xiao Pang lived for several days. One day, Josh and Adam came home and found him dead in the sink filled with water. They had a funeral for him and buried him right outside the school. We will always remember our little (but big) friend, Xiao Pang.
I can't imagine the mess of cooking a crab in the microwave.
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