it's their job to die

There's a fish tank in our Beijing office. Standing next to it this morning, I remarked to a colleague that we had a tank at home, but unfortunately had succeeded in killing 30 or so fish in the past 4 weeks -- a mixture of our ineptitude coupled with Archie's desire to overfeed the poor critters. Anyway, they're dead.

I'm used to Chinese folks' ability to speak bluntly. And I'm now used to the way animals are treated, but his response threw me:

"That's their job", he said.

"Eh?", says me, "I thought they were a Feng Shui tool to bring luck".

My colleague agreed with this - fish do bring luck, or rather they deflect bad luck! Their death is a side effect of having absorbed negative chi which would otherwise end up circulating around the apartment/office.

Poor things.

M