Let me paint the scene for you: Mr. Ren and I are heading from our house to our favorite vegetable market. Everyone stayed home (usually Addi comes with me; she is my super trooper shì chǎng shopper. She isn't squeamish about looking at the meat and the dead chickens, chicken feet, etc ...) so it was just Mr. Ren and me. He's driving, I'm trying to look cool riding shotgun in the GL8. We turn from our service road onto the main street and what to my wondering eyes should appear, but ~~a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer~~ a crap-load of sheep.

Now we're no city slickers. We're used to seeing livestock near our house. Chickens are prevalent, especially near the school. Every once in a while we'll see a guy walking a big white goat on a leash (I'm not even kidding). There are frequent carts being pulled by donkeys. Heck, once we even saw a small pickup trunk with giant pink pigs in the back. But this is my first run-in with sheep so I wanted to savor the moment. So naturally I made Mr. Ren stop in the middle of the road so I could take pictures.

Stopping in the middle of the road is not unusual in Beijing (whipping an impromptu 3 point turn in the middle of a major street is completely acceptable) so he didn't mind. I do think he got a little embarrassed when I rolled the window down and started taking pictures. The gentleman in the green (facing away from the camera) is the proprietor of the sheep operation. He only briefly glanced at the crazy white guy, hanging out of the passenger window of the minivan trying to take pictures of his sheep.

We started driving away but then I noticed the lambs. So we stopped again and I may have asked Mr. Ren to put it in reverse so I could get a close up picture (in the name of journalism). I'm not saying I did but I think the picture was worth it.