Let me first introduce the main character in this story. Her name is Doris and she is a black hen from Beijing. She behaves accordingly.
People who are from the capital and can adorn themselves with pedigrees from here are somehow a little more stately than others.
They are, after all, from the center of the Middle Kingdom, from the emperor’s city. Proudly they beat themselves on the chest and exclaimed 我 是 老 北京, wo shi lao beijing: I’re real beijinger.
When I first met her, she was the boss. The three hens she shared a chicken farm with came from another province, and had to stand so well at the back of the queue.
Doris was always first to the plate, punishing the others if they tried to walk past her.
DRESSING: Doris does not have the easiest hen to train
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Special
She was first found by her previous owners at an outdoor food market in Beijing. Such are now closed, in favor of the shopping center.
– This hen was exceptional, they were told. She laid huge green eggs.
Doris was thus a very special edition of the species.
I understood that too, but for us it was not a compliment.
We call her Doris, because she resembles the horrible aunt in the children’s film «Gilbert’s cruel revenge».
The aunt in this film was cunning and full of malice in the attempt to become the center of her nephew’s life.
We got Doris and the herd on the purchase when we took over the use of an old farmhouse up in the mountains in Beijing.
FJELLHEIMEN: Even though Doris was a city girl, she has had most of her life in a village in the mountains and has had this view
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Life experience
It turned out, strangely enough, that Doris was also the name the first owners had given her.
Their theory that she was struggling was her life experience.
The caretaker who looked after the property said that these hens were not as hardy as those born on the mountain, and that they would be able to freeze whole in the winter.
When it got cold, Doris and the other hens were therefore parked in the lowlands, in the backyard of a restaurant in Beijing. Here the herd had to divide home with a flock of other hens.
When they were retrieved, the others had disappeared. Only Doris was that.
That was when she must have become so naughty. The theory is that she had to fight her way up in a herd where she as a newcomer had a low rank.
Doris got new roommates. The three golden ones came by train all the way from Jiangsu, and had nothing to say.
ORGANIC: Eggs from your own chicken farm are a luxury
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The splash
I must say that I had no relationship with the hens in the beginning. For my part, we could have slaughtered them for the winter and had good dinners, instead of looking for a new home for them every winter.
I could only forget that plan. My daughter, who was then nine, was furious and asked if I really intended to eat our veins.
Doris was not the favorite. She was a little too scary for that. It was the three golden ones, Janne, Josefine and Johanne who got attention.
They got a coma out of the chicken coop and were trained to balance and do other arts. Except for Josefine, because she was too squeamish to play.
She escaped into the house and slipped on the floor.
The parents of a girl who often came to visit commented that it was like watching an adventure by Astrid Lindgren when the kids chattered and played with the hens.
I was not as excited, because the hens kicked up both the flower bed and the lawn, so I just let them be out with supervision.
PLAY: Our golden hens have our popular playmates
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Ubrukelege
I did not complain about the egg for breakfast. Beautiful, tasty and with strong orange plums. Except for Doris’ eggs. The big greens that were her specialty I never saw anything of.
Her egg has, as long as I have known her, been small and useless, with a strange pit inside the shell.
Nasty, I must admit.
The first year we had the hens in our arms, it was very challenging to find our own winter home.
In sheer desperation, I encouraged my mother to have them outside her room. She then lived with us and had a sunny balcony, but she did not see the benefit of waking up to cackling hens.
Fact
Then my colleague invited the hens to live on the office balcony. It was not many days before she deeply regretted it.
Finally, a friend took pity on us and let them live on a property she had in the country, with her own caretaker.
He was perfect for the job. When we came and picked them up in the spring, it was as if they had been to the spa, with beautiful shiny feathers, and they were fat.
The third summer, two of the golden ones died mysteriously when we were gone, so now only Doris and Janne were left.
The two of them seemed to find the tone, and the calm descended over the chicken coop.
ON A TRIP: There are others who have exotic pets. I met this guy in Beijing when he was out airing the goose and the birds he has in cages.
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Flaum
This summer I received a warning that things were going to change.
We had traveled to another part of the country on vacation, to get away from weeks of rain in Beijing.
Then I was sent a picture from the caretaker. Strangely enough, our tortoise had entered the chicken farm.
It probably felt safer there in the lightning and thunder, but I was not sure that Doris welcomed it.
Our small fish pond had thus passed over its banks. It had become a nuisance in the mountain village.
Of the large reed masses that hit China this summer created greater drama than this, not least in the city of Zhengzhou, where it usually never rains.
Passengers on the subway clung to the carriages as the water cascaded in and rose higher and higher.
I can hardly imagine a more panicked situation. Fourteen of the three hundred victims of the famine in Zhengzhou died on the subway.
Extreme weather
In Beijing tok flaumen life of 37 human. It should not have rained so much in 60 years in the capital.
It was this extreme weather that made me get closer to the hens.
A short stay in the pouring rain made it possible to travel up the mountain, but we came to leaks everywhere.
It had been so wet that mushrooms were now growing under the roof, and at the neighbors a snake had settled in the door frame.
I looked in to the hens and saw that the dish was full.
It was only after a couple of days that I realized that Doris was scratching. She did not come running when I put in vegetables, and she looked shabby.
Then I scoured the chicken farm and saw that the lining under the top layer was sticky wet. It had rained right in and the lining had become sour in the heat. Had she been poisoned?
I ran to the neighbors and they knew the advice.
– She must have caught a cold. They like to be when it’s wet for so long, one said, and came with medicine.
VENES: It is good to have good friends in the neighborhood when there is a crisis and one needs expertise in forced labor
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Boulder
Another neighbor said that Doris had probably got diarrhea, and that I had to try to give her medicine for it, nutritious food and water.
Traveling to the vet was worse. The village closed its gates for the Delta variant of Covid had reached 35 Chinese cities, and Beijing had received four cases.
If I went out with the hen, I did not enter the village again.
The lake had also led to a landslide and the road was now blocked by boulders.
It kept pushing down.
Morning, noon and evening I force-fed Doris because she did not eat herself, and when the shit came out, she could not sit in it.
Then I had to wash the back end, and blow dry her.
STONE RASE: The flume caused boulders to fall from the mountain and close the road
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A baby
My daughter looked at me in amazement as I tugged the hen into a towel and treated Doris like a baby.
While she has become a teenager and has long since finished playing with hens, it is still not relevant to eat them.
Now she still thought that it went over all boot shafts. She got really angry that I did not have time to play cards, or watch movies that I had promised.
But hello, I had to take care of the hen.
Once Doris got to play monopoly, and once she got to watch movies, but that was enough for the teenager.
Some days were good. Then Doris sat in the sun and shone with shiny feathers and leaned her head against my chest. Other days she hung with her beak.
She did not get better anyway.
CHICKEN MOTHER: It took extremes for me to get a feel for the joker Doris.
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The vet
When I finally got her to the vet, I had become an internet expert on chicken diseases. Like most doctors, the vet thought my theories were silly.
This was hardly contagious, he said, but Doris was not strong enough to take a blood sample. Maybe just as well, because such a test would cost seven hundred kroner.
Out in the hallway stood people with trained dogs, groomed cats, and chirping birds. A woman was carrying a dead rabbit.
She cried, for lifesaving was not possible.
I had just been to Guizhou Province where dog meat is on the menu when there is a party, but it is not common in Beijing. Here, pets are often a status symbol.
DELICACY: Grilled dog is party food in parts of China, here in Guizhou
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– Beautiful
Hens do not fall into that category, but Doris received a lot of praise from the staff for her beautiful black feathers. Look how beautiful she is!
I was equipped with vitamin syringes and other medicines, and then it was on again with home care.
Back in the village, the neighbors flirted with me, who spent so much time and effort on a ten-year-old hen.
– Lay eggs?
– No, she’s never done that as long as we’ve had her.
– Boil soup on her, almost runga it out through the neighborhood.
It was a new trip to the vet.
BEAUTIFUL: Doris received a compliment for being beautiful
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Hen mother
This time a woman with a small canary was caged in the waiting room.
She opened her eyes when she saw that I had a hen with me. Then I took Doris on my lap and patted her, as proud as a rooster.
Now the vet concluded that Doris would hardly be able to walk again, but there was one last resort I could try: Acupuncture.
He thought it would take time, but at times it worked wonders.
That was the limit for me.
Well, I wanted to help the old joker Doris to a longer life, and now I had fallen in love with her. However, having the hen in need of care at home and the pilgrimage to the acupuncturist on a busy weekday did not work out.
I never thought I would shed a tear for a hen, but now I did.
Then it was goodbye, but Doris never became soup. Since there is a local Christian family in the village, I could defend that she got a grave, adorned with a small wooden cross.
Greetings hen mother.
CEMETERY: Doris did not turn into soup, but got a burial ground in the garden
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