On the Beach of Amoy

von Marcus Krug

I’ve seen things, you people wouldn’t believe – a burning ship on the beach of Amoy.

An old fat guy with a thick white fake beard is wedged in a glaring red neoprene suit that looks like it’s painted on his chubby frame. His huge bald head is covered by a tight red hood with white fluffy fur lining – only his big fleshy earlobes stick out.

The guy is standing on a sleigh-like thing which closely resembles one of these scrapped Chinese house boats. But the boat – hung with ridiculously colourful and flashing Christmas illumination – doesn’t lie in the water itself, it is carried by two skids which used to belong to a yellow water plane in a distant past. And if that picture wasn’t bizarre enough already, the whole Christmas-water-sleigh thing is pulled by the last nine specimen of the Yangzi river dolphin. The dolphins lie pairwise in their gear. On their heads they wear flashing plastic reindeer antlers. In the lead, a single river dolphin with a red nose is waiting impatiently – thrashing around.

My view goes back to the old fatso in the wetsuit. His face is now clearly recognisable as that of the Bodhisattva Maitreya, the pot belly Buddha. And the old round faced guy calls out to the red nosed Yangzi river dolphin in the lead “JIA YOU, LUDOLF! JIA YOU!” And off they buzz.

One of the last things I see, is a juicy explosion when the last Yangzi river dolphins and the Christmas-Bodhisattva’s water-sleigh-vehicle – while attempting to cross the Formosa Strait – run into a people’s republican underwater mine.

Feeling dizzy, I step aside to the left. Right beside me, a huge sack – a blue, red and white chequered bag with a zipper and long handles – filled with nicely wrapped Christmas presents hits the beach of Amoy. Worn out by the unusual visual effects and events I slump back into the sand and fall asleep immediately. When I wake up once more, everything starts all over again…