Health Hazard IV: Birds and Boats

In a sure sign that no lessons at all have been learned from the last bout of Avian Bird Flu, here are some chickens quite happily wandering around the streets besides University. Cognitive dissonance sets in: This city is one of China's industrial and technological powerhouses, isn't it?

I can hardly complain though. On the street I used to live on in Shanghai, poultry sellers would slaughter caged ducks and chickens in the open-air.

Once, a man hung a dog's body from a lamppost and skinned it with a big knife. Spatters of blood stained the mottled brown of the lamppost, and the surrounding pavement an unexpectedly dark crimson for days.

Back in Harbin, and adding fuel to the flames (incidentally, an idiom also found in Chinese, in the form 火上加油), a rusting boat sat nearby, the bottom awash with fetid, stagnating water.

Cholera, tetanus, typhoid, hepatitis...