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Portraits Paula Bock

Djin Kwie Liem / In his shop, it's good that something fishy's goin' on

Dank and dark, the fish lair is tucked in a brick alley in Seattle's International District, around the corner from an herbalist and Chinese barbecue shops, a few steps past a dumpster.

When you see the hand-scrawled cardboard sign, "Crickets: 100 for $4," you're there. Liem's Aquarium and Bird Shop. Owner Djin Kwie Liem doesn't sell tropical birds anymore (too many import and breeding regulations), but that just means more room for exotic fish.

Fish, fish, FISH! More than 2,000 fish flutter in 84 tanks: Jewel-size guppies with polka-dotted tails; bulgy-eyed blue koi; Corydoras catfish lurking like lizards in gravel.

Siamese fighting fish swim solo in smudged plastic drinking cups. Silver dragon fish from Australia swoop their filmy tails. The Lionhead Orandas, topped with swirly tufts, flirt like Lucille Ball.

If Neptune had a bachelor brother, this shop would be his undersea cave. Hoses and nets dangle haphazardly above. Decades-old clutter creeps over every horizontal surface like shipwreck debris. Customers love it.

"Vietnamese people, Chinese people, white people, black people," Liem says. "Everybody comes here." Actually, he says, most of the fish fanciers are men. Why? "Because women need to save money and time."

The allure of fish?

"Feng shui," the fish dealer says. "Good luck. To protect against any bad things."

What about the 1983 Wah Mee massacre, right next door?

"No problem for the fish," Liem says. "Some people say their fish were dancing, jumpy that night, but I never had trouble with mine."

Liem has loved fish since he was a boy in Java, helping his dad raise goldfish in a cement pond ringed by rocks. Anti-Chinese sentiment in Indonesia prompted the family to move to China (pre-Communist revolution), then Hong Kong, then Sabah, Malaysia. Along the way, Liem crafted engine parts, worked import/export, made incubators for chickens, fabricated plastics, dabbled in bicycle rental and owned a grocery store and petrol station. Yet his passion was always for fish, so as soon as he could, he opened a tropical bird and fish shop in Malaysia, then set up shop in Maynard Alley in 1979.

Almost 70, Liem doesn't plan to retire anytime soon. His four children aren't fish fanciers, so the fish master needs to tend his finned friends in their tanks.

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