I found a small glass bottle lying in the street in Hong Kong. The bottle had no label, no embossing, no top. There was no indication of what it had originally been used for. It was just a small, clear glass bottle. I picked it up and put it in my pocket. Later, back in my hotel, I cleaned it inside and out with hot soapy water. The next day a bunch of us, my wife and I and various members of her extended family, all went to Cheung Chau. Cheung Chau is one of about 200 islands around Hong Kong. It is very small and quaint, with thin alleyways, tight crowded restaurants, and tiny shops. People walk everywhere on the island. I liked the island so much that I told my wife, if we ever decide to retire in Hong Kong, we should live there.

While wandering along the island’s walkways, I saw and picked up two different bird feathers. I don’t know what kind of birds they were from. They looked like they could have come from a common sparrow like we see back home. The kind of feather that one frequently finds in the backyard. Grey in colour, they were either wing feathers or possibly tail feathers.

Perhaps the feathers were from the Chinese Bulbul. Small and sparrow-like, the Bulbul is one of the most common birds in Hong Kong. I looked it up in a book. They might also be from the Orange-Headed Thrush or the Flycatcher or the Common Tailorbird, other familiar birds that are widespread throughout the area. Each feather was only about an inch and a half in length. Maybe a quarter inch wide. Nothing special if one were to compare them to, say, the primary flight feathers from a Red-tailed Hawk or the tail feathers from a Ring-neck Pheasant or the wing feather of a Trumpeter Swan, but they were nice in their own way. If, that is, one appreciates the beauty of a feather. Later, in the hotel, I rinsed them clean in hot water, patted them dry, slipped them inside the small glass bottle from the day before and set the bottle on the bedside stand. 

Over the next few days, while exploring different districts and neighbourhoods throughout Hong Kong, I found a couple of more feathers. Similar to the first two. Back in the hotel, each day, I rinsed them clean, dried them and put them along with the others inside the bottle.

“What is that?” My wife’s niece, a young Chinese girl of about fifteen, asked me. She and her brother had come to the hotel to escort us to meet the rest of the family at a dim sum restaurant.

“Feathers,” I said simply.

“What for?”

“What for?”

“What are you going to do with them?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I’m going to leave them in the bottle and look at them.”

She looked at the bottle. She looked at me. She showed it to her brother. He looked at it and looked at me. She looked back at the bottle and then back at me with what I interpreted as consternation.

“Why?”

I knew at that moment that she would never understand my interest in feathers just as I would never understand her lack of interest in feathers. I figured that, to her, a bird was something to eat. In the Mong Kok district of Kowloon, an area of open food stalls along the street, where people sold different types of vegetables and fruits and meats, I had watched a woman reach into a cage and grab little live birds. The birds were about the size of a small mandarin orange. They had feathers similar to the ones that I had picked up and kept. I watched the woman snip off the bird’s petite heads and miniscule wings and tiny feet with a small pair of scissors and stuff the little, round bloody bodies into a plastic bag. Her customers would take them home, pluck them and cook them for dinner. That, I imagined, was what my wife’s niece thought of when she saw the little grey feathers that I had put into the small glass bottle. At first, I thought I would explain to her that wherever I go, whatever country I visit, I always find a feather or two and keep it. I know I shouldn’t, but I admit that I do. Then I thought that maybe I would tell her, jokingly, that I was going to take these feathers home and make myself a pair of wings so I could fly. But I knew she would most likely just think I was nuts. If she didn’t already. I realised that whatever I said next would not matter.

“Well,” I finally said. “I just like feathers.”

The following year my wife’s niece came to America to finish her schooling. She was studying architecture. She was visiting us at our house one night. She told me that she had never had spaghetti, so I made it for her for dinner. At one point I noticed that she saw the small glass bottle of feathers sitting on a window sill amongst various other objects; an abalone shell, a rock with a fossil embedded in it, a piece of quartz crystal, a pine cone. There were also two small statues of the Buddha, one wooden, one jadeite, which I had got in Hong Kong. She picked up the bottle and held it in her hands and looked at it. She turned around and looked at me. She looked at the bottle again and then looked back at me. I waited for it, but she showed no expression at all. She didn’t smile. She didn’t frown. She didn’t shake her head. She didn’t say, oh yeah, I remember this. She didn’t say a word. She just looked at me. Then she looked at the bottle again and set it back down on the window sill.

I knew what she was thinking. At least I thought I knew what she was thinking. What’s with this crazy gweilo? Who, in his right mind, I imagined her thinking, would keep a small glass bottle that he found on the street and put bird feathers in it?

Apparently, I would.

Header image by Tammy Lai-Ming Ho.

How to cite: Beyl, Jeff. “The Small Glass Bottle of Feathers.”  Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 26 May 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/05/26/small-glass-bottle.

Jeff Beyl writes about nature, fly-fishing, music, geology, surfing, and the ocean. He has been published in several magazines such as Big Sky Journal, Outside Bozeman, Montana Fly-fishing, Idaho Magazine, Northwest Sportsman, Ocean Magazine, Snowy Egret Literary Journal. His book, A Conversation With the Earth, was published in 2020. He has travelled widely through Asia, Hong Kong, Japan, Europe, the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. He is a jazz guitarist and photographer, scuba diver and fly-fisherman. He lives in Seattle with his wife. [All contributions by Jeff Beyl.]

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