Beggers

So most of us more giving foreigner types in China are a little bit conflicted the more we learn about the the realities of the situation. There are basically four kinds of beggars in Shenzhen. the first kind are the crippled or otherwise handicapped, the second kind are the elderly, the third kind are nicely dressed students with their heads bowed and a short descriptive reason chalked in front of them explaining why they can't their tuition, and the fourth involves children. I've made a rule not to pay children. Typically they'll be performing some kind of [often dangerous] circus act in the street and they're also the most pestilent. They'll come to you inside an open-air restaurant to collect for you merely observing their act.

The elderly and the students get most of my attention. There's an elderly woman camped out on the bridge I use to cross the street to my bus stop. She never really asks for anything, she just sits there all day looking half dead with a small box in front of her. Unlike the cripples, it's almost assured that they're not working for anyone and they get to keep the money you give.

Though I used to give to cripples a lot, I do it with less and less frequency now. Most Chinese will tell you that the Triads, 200+ year old gangs in the Pearl River delta, put them out and take most of the money. I took it as hearsay till I asked myself how the quadriplegic's and other severely handicapped make it to the top of the very steep steps of the cross-over bridge I mentioned before. On top of that, many of them exacerbate wounds so there's always a bloody appendage to wave around. There are many, many stories of Triads making the cripples what they are. Maybe they were kidnapped, maybe they owed some money. In any case, I have little faith that the money I give will be used by the person I give it to. I still give to them, just much less than before.

In the case of the first two pictures above, this woman spent two days going around Bai Shi Zhou. The first day she was wailing very loudly. Not a fake wail, but one of acute physical pain of pushing herself and her son across the pavement. She was being followed by a bunch of school children, as you can see. The situation itself didn't make a lot of sense. How could her son be really sleeping through all of the commotion? On top of that, she didn't stand out as particularly handicapped besides her dramatic method of transportation. But it sent chills down my spine [and I took a picture], so I gave money. I'm sure she needed it more than I do.

Twice I paid these kids in the bottom picture. The first time only because I took a picture, the second time because one of them refused to leave my table until I paid up. I'd love to give the parents a good whack on the head of the head. As you can see, the gimmick was to have one kid holding a metal ladder with her feet while ringing brass chimes like a trained monkey as another child did acrobatics on the ladder high above her. It really, really angered me seeing this. This week, the same kids are doing some strange variation of cartwheels in the street.

Shenzhen Beggars

Many beggars in Shenzhen write their story in chalk in front of them. Typically, the younger they are the more inclined they are to curl up into a ball of shame and avoid eye contact with passersby. It's not uncommon to see students younger than me curled up against a wall with people standing around them reading their story begging for any assistance in paying for their college tuition.

According to my roommates loose transition, this man's story is that his son was a businessman gone bad who's in jail now for cheating people. The 70-year old man is now in the unfortunate position of having to support his granddaughter as well feed himself. It should be noted that elderly in China are almost entirely dependent on their children for financial stability.

As a side-note, the International Herald Tribune had an excellent write-up about how frequently elderly are being left behind now as parents spend all their money on developing their children's future. A very common site in Shenzhen are women as old as my grandmother picking through trash cans for recyclable bottles. Story here.





Tags: Treyopia photos photography China Chinese Shenzhen beggars, beggers, beggar, beggar, elderly, old, panhandling panhandlers poor poverty crime

Three Steps to Anger

Today was the first time I seethed in anger at the powers that be* here. When I decided to come to China I was expecting a police state. I was expecting to see troops in the street, propaganda everywhere, and little school children practice handling an AK-47 while rolling underneath barbed wire. Maybe not the last part, but I certainly expected an actively repressive system*.

Upon arrival, I was floored by people openly criticizing The Chairman* and bemoaning the CR*. I even heard little jokes here and there about Beijing and curious looks when I asked why people weren't out in the streets celebrating National Day. "That's their day," I was told, "not ours." I assumed that the order here was a less benign version of the de facto single party rule in Japan or [previously] Mexico. China is a huge ship of state to manage and those in charge were doing a remarkable job letting the economy grow and thus most people were content.

My previous apologetics are over. I'm angry. The first thing that got me is the crackdown going on against the street vendors. I watched a poor woman trying to grab her wok and coal heater from her small wooden cart as The Blue* came and took her small potato & dumpling stand away. Earlier in the day I had seen the Pakistani sheep kabob man [who always tries to initiate conversation and always asks if the (different) girl I'm with is my wife] hanging out on the steps. I asked him where his stand was and he walked us into an alley at the bottom floor of his apartment below and grilled my dinner. He told L., who speaks much better Chinese than I, that he and his friends were hiding out from The Blue.

While I have some issue with the trash disposal systems of the street food vendors in Tianjin, there are no such problems in Shenzhen. The streets here, where vending has gone on since I've been at my new apartment, are nearly as clean as the streets in the uber-rich neighborhoods of Shukou where vender's only come out at night. Other than making the Little Guy pay off the powers that be, there is no good reason to walk around stealing their carts.

Crackdown and send KFC running; leave the real entrepreneurs alone.

On to specimen #2; monkeys on the street. I got off the bus today and was entranced by a man whipping at a monkey. He had three Patas Monkey's attached to a single rope. He was agitating them until they would comically come after him and grab his hat or steal the whip or pounce on his head. It was amusing and horrifying all at the same time. Amusing in that it would be funny if they were trained to do this, which I'm sure his audience thought. It was horrifying because they were just animals reacting intelligently to a belligerent keeper. There are no animal welfare laws in China, as witnessed by the recent "animal olympics" in Shanghai and this charade.

And then the kicker...

I have a huge soft spot in my heart for the disabled in China. You see many of them as beggars on the street. Shenzhen being what it is, people come from all over China to escape the grinding poverty of the countryside. It's worse for some than others. It's always angered me that there really isn't much of a social safety net here, certainly no workers comp, and poor cripples fall through the cracks and end up working for gangsters who extort them into begging.

Walking out of dinner with my friend Lilly I saw a man crawling through the street. He wasn't using his feet at all, which were cocked awkwardly in a L shape behind him. He was crawling on his stomach. You could make out a barely audible weeping or moaning each time he moved. Saliva fell from his mouth as he inched forward, skin scraping the road, pushing along a small beggars cup in front of him.

It hurts seeing that kind of stuff. It angers me seeing resources being spent to harass the working poor, who are trying to earn an honest buck, while people like the beggar are ignored and monkey's are being whipped on street corners for amusement.


* going out of my way to use vocab that doesn't draw too much attention

Tags: Treyopia stories disabled China cripples beggars beggers poverty animal rights street crackdown vendors; entrepreneurs; entrepreneur