(LI SHIGONG)

The truth of the matter is that I was actually dodging the Beijing street vendor a few weeks after asking him if he had any more toy firearms: replicas of real guns like M-16's and AK-47s. I had not seen the dark, wrinkled face of the Chinese man for a long time after happily purchasing two silver-toned realistic-looking toy rifles, thinking he had given me a bargain price. Now that he had reappeared stationed on the very street corner of my bus stop, I had been taking pains to avoid contact for the simple reason that in his long absence, I had already secured several variations of military shooting weapons for my pending photography project on my to-do list. Since moving to Beijing, I had morphed from an avid collector of teapots, to a collector of model toy guns.

I am a peace-loving, anti-war, anti-gun advocate. Since my youth, despite the attraction of fancy TV gunslingers; playing "Cowboys and Indians" with my best friend who lived next door; and my father's occasional hunting trips to the desert with his friend to shoot jackrabbits, I have never fired a real gun with bullets. I do remember one Christmas receiving a handsome gun and holster from an anonymous gift giver. The gun was a silver Colt-45 cap-shooter, and it came neatly tucked inside a soft white leather holster with colorful rhinestones decorating the outside. This wonderful piece of technology, in my youthful mind, looked so cool looped on my pants belt strapped to my leg. Now my only disappointment when playing shoot-em-up games with my neighborhood buddies, was that I had only a single gun to draw during our make-believe showdowns at sunset, whereas they had at least two of these six-shooters.

A strange thing happened one day. The gun disappeared from my room. My mother claimed to have no knowledge of the guns' whereabouts, although I had overheard my parents conversing that I was becoming too attached to that particular killing toy. It was only a few days after this when mother began vocalizing, "There will be no guns of any kind in this house!" On this subject she was quite adamant. Perhaps her bias against toy guns, or real ones, was colored by the event of my godmother being struck down while attending church, killed by a stray bullet.

The case of my phantom gun, however, did not deter my attempts to enjoy the power of outwitting my friends during our Cowboy-Indian conflicts. I simply made my own firearms from tender tree branches, or large plants bearing a close resemblance to this bullet spewing weapon of choice. Clearly a bow and arrows would never do in our critical ambush skirmishes and face-offs.

Years later, when embarking on an anti-war photography project, I found it very difficult to find stores that sold toy guns in the state of Illinois. Apparently many parent groups opposing symbolic dangerous "toys" had successfully pressured stores to remove toy guns from their shelves. Any store that refused faced the threat of consumer boycotts.

Imagine my surprise when in a city in south China's Hunan Province a few years ago, seeing a gang of middle school boys intensely engaged in shooting large toy water guns at one another. They dodged traffic and cars with reckless abandon in their pursuit to get their shots off without getting hit themselves. For several minutes it seemed that any of these youngsters would be accidentally killed by unwary motorists. More recently, when visiting a smaller city outside of Beijing, I looked at a street vendor's wagonload of goods and was amazed at the variety of toy weapons on display. Some pistols looked so authentic that I felt compelled to examine them physically. The detailed accuracy and similarity was simply amazing. Most of the gun packs were stamped "Made in China."

Curious shoppers or avid gun enthusiasts need only surf the Net or visit places like Yaxiu or Yabaolu in Beijing to find the nouveau gunsmiths pandering toy guns in the likenesses of Derringer cigarette lighters, old-fashioned muskets, miniature cannons, and large life-sized assault rifles, to a wide range of toys creatively fashioned from simple metal bullet casings and cartridges. A wide selection of lookalike fire power from small arms and up delightfully demonstrate audio sounds of rapid machine guns, single shots, colorful lights flashing with simulated pump action and recoils. Some of the more advanced weapons even have red laser beams for target accuracy, accompanied with rubber-tipped projectiles that will eject with alarming force. These toys come with parental warnings for child "safety."

Time and time again, we are saddened by Western mass killings, yet any Chinese toy shop has guns of some kind. It would be unusual to find males today who do not know of Glocks or Uzis. In an age where technology has taken center stage beyond the cinema, marketing weapon products on the open market is but one step in a series of steps toward Western madness. Am I the only one amazed by the over-reaching in China toward embracing things that reflect traditional Western symbolism?

The author is an American living in Beijing