Downstairs lobby ain't much to brag about

Thank goodness I have an elevator! Mimi and I use it many times a day to go outside. There's an annoying little lobby at the bottom of the elevator, though, that we have to walk through to get outside. Some neighbors park their e-bikes in the lobby, instead of parking them one more floor down in the basement where they have ramps for easy in-and-out access. We have to squeeze by them to go in and out. There are signs in the lobby that say "no parking," but those signs have been there eight years and no one enforces the rules. In the photo above, Mimi and I have just come back inside the lobby from outside. We entered through a clear glass door that we have a key to.

The lobby is L-shaped, and we've just turned the corner of the L. There's the elevator on Mimi's left side. The lady from the 9th floor lets her brown male poodle pee at the very bottom of the stairs every single day (you can't see the stairs, but they are to Mimi's right side). People walk through the pee because they don't notice it until it is too late. Mimi, on the other hand, swings way out so she doesn't get anywhere near the puddle. 

Two families have first floor apartments. I wouldn't want to be them, with people right outside your door all the time waiting for the elevator.

All my neighbors used to be afraid of Mimi, because she barks loudly at them. Most of them have gotten used to her and laugh at her now. They know she's not going to bite. Maybe they don't all love her, but I'm not really thrilled with all their e-bikes and dog pee either, so we're even. 

In China, public areas like lobbies and stairwells are not well maintained. We have cleaners who come every morning with a wet rag mop. They go up to the 10th floor with the wet mop, and walk down the stairs mopping as they go. They never clean or re-moisten the mop during this routine, and things don't get very clean. The walls are black where the dirty mop slaps them when moving from side to side. 

Even very rich people live in this kind of environment where they have to put up with less-than-stellar public areas. What I mean is, I think the people on the 10th floor of my building, who have two floors and roof garden access and drive BMWs are probably millionaires. They have to deal with the dirt, clutter and dog pee just like us regular joes do. 

They missed me

"Hey, come over here!" The 88-year-old woman and her middle-aged caretaker (pictured) wave their hands and yell at me from their kitchen sink overlooking the apartment grounds where I am walking Mimi.

"We haven't seen you in almost a year and a half! Where were you?" they ask.

I am touched. They had noticed my absence and gotten the time frame almost exactly right.

I tell them what happened, and they are shocked -- mostly that I had come back overseas after such a serious diagnosis.

They tell me to come in and visit, but I have Mimi with me right now, so I tell them I'll come back another time when my dog is not with me. Sounds good to them. They like me, but they aren't anxious to have dog hair or muddy paw prints in their spotless abode.

A few days later, I'm out with Mimi again when the caretaker yells at me to come over to the window again. She has something she wants to give me. I can't tell what it is until she places it in my hand. It is a warm, wet piece of corn on the cob.

I don't like warm wet things, but I thank her profusely and carry it in my left hand while Mimi's leash is in my right. When I get to the downstairs door to my apartment building, I have trouble handling the key so I can get in. Finally, I get on the elevator, punch more buttons with my hands that are not free, and get back home.

Life here is awkward like that sometimes. Awkward, but interesting. 

Will leap tall buildings if necessary

The screams were unbearable to hear. The dog sounded like she was dying. Was she caught in some patio furniture or railing, or was she being beaten to death? I couldn't stay sitting at my computer, I had to get up and see what was going on.

I ran to the bathroom window, my eyes searching directly downstairs, toward the facing building, to a certain first-floor apartment patio, the one that belongs to the man I had already labeled in my mind as the dog butcher. I expected to see this 70-ish year old man standing over a dead dog and blood spatter. Yes, it was quite that bad.

There he was, on the patio. I could hear the dog's screams, and I could see the man, but tall bushes obscured my view. Then I saw the man raise his arm with wire whip in hand, and continue pummeling the dog in his "care."

Fortunately, I was wearing sports shoes. I ran to my front door, flung it open, and waited for the elevator to climb eight floors to get me. I really wanted to fly down the stairs, but having timed it previously, I knew it was faster to wait for the elevator. I wondered if I would get there in time to save the dog's life.

I ran out the first floor lobby door, leaped over landscaping boulders into the dry stone creek bed and out the other side. I threw out my arms and screamed as I came up out of the creek. My neighbors had never seen me in superman mode before.

I hadn't even seen my other neighbors at first. Two Chinese neighbor ladies were standing on a bridge that spans the creek; it is the distance they felt was safest to observe the dog torture going on. They saw me with rage on my face, and they told me to stay back with them. Chinese never want to get involved. The man could have been beating his wife and they still would have stood back at a distance to watch.

I am not going to let a dog die because I am too timid to stand up to the old man. I forged ahead and went to his shrub-obscured patio. I was fully ready to wrestle him to the ground if I needed to, and was even a little disappointed that it didn't come to that.

About the same time the ladies were telling me to hang back, a 30-something Chinese man still in his pajamas at 10:00 a.m. starting shrieking at the old man from his third floor balcony of my building. Hostile words were being exchanged by the two men. I didn't catch the words, so I don't know if the young man was just bothered by the noise or the fact that an animal was being tortured. I'm pretty sure he has a dog himself, so I hope it was the latter.

I peeked through the shrubs surrounding the butcher's patio, even as the ladies back on the bridge were still whispering and telling me to come back. I noticed that the poor little dog, no blood visible, had cowered into a corner with eyes looking down, clearly scared to death of the man towering over her.

"What's going on?" I asked rather innocently in Chinese. The man left the dog alone, and came over. He was nice to me. He said his dog had nibbled someone's calf and he had no choice but to beat the dog. He assured me he liked dogs. I was pleasant, but I suggested perhaps he had beaten the dog a little too long. (That sounds awful in English, but comes across better in Chinese. Of course it is not good that he had tortured the dog at all.) He started talking to me in long sentences in an unfamiliar dialect. I told him I wasn't understanding everything he said.

Meanwhile, the two ladies on the bridge were worried the foreigner woman needed some help, and were perhaps a little ashamed that they hadn't been bold enough to intervene. One of them came over to talk with us and be the peacemaker, if that was needed. I left while she finished talking to the old guy. This particular lady is offbeat but awesome; her own dog died of natural causes recently, and she feeds and gives water to all the wild cats in the neighborhood every single day.

The torture having ceased, I returned home. On the way back, a neighbor man who owns a brown poodle walked by and gave me an approving smile. Apparently all the neighbors had been watching everything from inside their homes. I have a feeling that "the foreign woman leaping over boulders to rescue a dog" will be the conversation at many a dinner table tonight.

By the time I got back home, the third floor guy had gotten dressed, and he went over to talk to the mean guy on the patio (hopefully to talk some sense into him). Another lady walking a brown poodle -- there are lots and lots of brown poodles in this complex -- yelled a conversation with the old man from the bridge.

It was quite the neighborhood incident. The mean guy CLEARLY knows that his neighbors are very unhappy with him and his treatment of his dog. It has been a few hours, and my adrenaline still seems to be coursing through my veins.

Let not this point get lost in the story -- 99 percent of the people around me wouldn't hurt a flea. One misdirected man should not reflect on any of his countrymen.

Four or five years ago, I saw that the mean man was standing over a plywood table on his patio, and there were cuts of meat on the table. I never saw his two dogs after that, so I came up with a theory that he killed his own dogs. My Chinese friends think I am crazy; they think no one could do something like that. But I disagree. I think the man could be some kind of dog-hurting psychopath. 

Ninja neighbor

God is my protector, but I can't help but wonder if, just for fun, he has delegated out some of those responsibilities to my dog Mimi and my neighbor, Baybee. This little boy from across the hallway dropped by recently and busted a move or two. He was pretty fierce. I think a troublemaker would be a fool to mess in my neighborhood!