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

Letter from Japan

Alvin Saha:

Hey, you don't know me, but I just happened to come upon your profile and I remembered that you used to write for the Spinnaker. I always thought that you wrote good stuff, so I sat down to read your profile, and found out that you are in China. I'm studying in Japan for a year, I've been here for about 6-7 months now, with about 5 more to go. What do you think about China and the political system? I was reading a little bit of your blog, but not very deeply, I must admit. What program are you teaching in China with? I've never been to China, but I've found that Japan is socially repressed and alienating. Oddly enough, it isn't just the gaijin (foreigners) who are alienated, but the Japanese themselves as well. To me, Japan, though a great nation (not to mention a helluva lot of fun), seems to have a large number of social problems that stem not from political repression, but rather societal values and the trouble that the younger generations are having with embracing liberal Western values and maintaining their traditional vales, which are often at odds with each other. Is China like this?

My response:

Hey Alvin,

I'm down in Shenzhen, China's first capitalist experiment [called a Special Economic Zone], teaching at a boarding school run by Beijing/Peking University. I'm teaching grades 3 - 6 right now. It's not quite what I was expecting to be doing but the job has grown on me a lot. I'm thinking next year I want explicitly aim to teach at a college. I'm assuming you're studying Japanese, right? My Chinese is coming along slowly but surely.

Ey, it seems the problems are very different in our respective countries. The Chinese are very family oriented. I mean, I'd always heard that other countries are family oriented, but coming from a divorced family with a great deal of estrangement I always assumed that the other half of America with non-divorced households was "family oriented."

By family oriented, they mean things like my roommate given half of her $250 a month to her parents. They saved a lifetime for her college education and now she subsidizes their future retirement. There's also the dynamic that almost every household being single-child. Kids here are lavished with attention and whatever the parents can afford.

Alienation just isn't an issue that I've seen.

The issues most younger Chinese face is trying to find meaningful and prosperous employment. This is a country that turns old ladies into human lawnmowers. Every store and restaurant has about double the staff that it really needs. There's just too many people... even a college degree in accounting, like my roommate, won't get you too much in your hometown. A lot of them move to the bigger cities for work.

Even in places like Shenzhen, my city, where almost no one is local, people cling to what's left of "traditional" values. Mao destroyed a lot of what we'd consider traditional Chinese culture, but there's an air of prudence about. Girls aren't supposed to wear bikini's to the beach and most of the women I've flirted with have kissed, at most, one boy in their quarter century of life. Being far away from home doesn't seem to erode these values as much as you'd think.

"Modern" is in, but it means money... not culture or thought. There is no art scene to speak of like in Japan. There are no "scenes" at all pushing boundaries and asking troubling questions. Everyone just wants to make enough cash to survive and give their kids a better future. So no, there really is no clash between their take on modern and traditional values.

Glad to hear from you,
- Trey Menefee

Tags: Treyopia China Chinese Japan Japanese culture modern difference traditional

Thank You, America

A personal "thanks" for all of you who voted the right way. I am supremely grateful to the American people for sweeping out the trash that's been in Washington too long.

I'm not talking about the people who had ideas different than my own [admittedly, bleeding-heart liberal] leanings. American is a land with many ideas and they should all be represented in a democratic forum.

I'm talking about the overtly corrupt, inept, and horrifically partisan jackasses that put out negative campaign commercials taking the public for idiots by trying to tie their opponents to child molesters, Osama, and perhaps provide Photoshopped© images of them suckling at the man-goat hybrid teets of Satan himself. I'm talking about those that have allowed spending to go unchecked and policy unexamined for so long. I'm talking about the people who would name legislation written FOR the logging industry the "Healthy Forest Initiative."

Let's hope this new batch of freshmen Dem's do the right thing and work with the Republicans still in office to change the tone in Washington and start fixing the massive problems facing our nation.

For those who want to know just how bad things had gotten, Matt Taibbi did an excellent write-up for Rolling Stone: "Time to Go! Inside The Worst Congress Ever."

I end with this question, though: What changed? Besides Katrina and Foley, most of ineptitude and corruption were the same in 2004 as they were in 2006. According to the polls at the time, people were already getting disillusioned with the President and his party. They didn't like Bush, but they sure as hell didn't like Kerry and the Democrats enough to actually vote for them. Taking both houses of Congress was unimaginable even a year ago. What changed that?

Tags: Treyopia politics current events China Election 2006 mid-terms democrats republicans thank you analysis questions what changed

To Tianjin and Back, Pt 1.

There's something about the style of business in China that drives normal people insane and provides a preferred alternative lifestyle for others. Knowing, for instance, that I had 30 days to make it to Tianjin and back was a source of endless speculation about when, and how, I'd get there. The game gets more fun as the date gets closer and you wonder just how the hell they're going to pull it off. On Sunday I get a text message, "when do you need that Residence Permit?"

"Tuesday, I think. Wednesday at latest."

Bear in mind that Tianjin is to Shenzhen what New York City is to Miami. Same country, sure, even on the same coast, but no where close to each other. No response to my reply.

I had dropped my newly unlocked American cell phone in the water mountain climbing on Sunday and had to bring my crap Chinese phone to work the next day. The battery was nearly dead but so I had to turn it on for a moment to collect text messages after every class. There was no way they wouldn't be giving me the news of my visit. I was expecting a flight out the next morning.

It came.

"Your train leaves tonight at 9:15"

My last class ended at 5:30. It takes 30 minutes to get home from school. It takes about an hour to get to the train station. I didn't have a single bag packed. I grumbled, but I was happy. I deeply wanted to go to Tianjin. I had Chinese friends I wanted to see, I wanted to have a drink with Brian and David at Ali Babba's, and I wanted to dine on street kabobs again. A short break from the heat and teaching duties in Shenzhen was also in order.

*** Trains ***


When you tell someone that you just got off a 27 hour train ride they look at you with pity. They imagine something akin to the 14 hour flight from NYC to Beijing doubled, but without English speakers. Maybe for some people it is - and I've certainly heard people complain about them - but for me it's not even close. It's actually one of the most comfortable modes of traveling.

Your body adjusts getting into them. Your bowels tighten to avoid the squalid bathrooms, your energy levels drop to a level appropriate for being stuck in such a cramped environment. It's the same thing as a stormy Sunday afternoon when all the works done. Your body just prepares itself for the day inside without any expectations of a long walk or much more than reading, looking out the window while sipping tea, or struggling to speak with your "roommates."

Chinese sleeper cars are arranged such that about 2/3's of the width of the car is split into about 10 different "rooms." Each room has six beds, three high, with a small night stand in the middle against the window. Across from each room is a table with two flip-down chairs below the luggage racks. A very narrow hallway, maybe a foot and a half wide, separates the beds from the tables. Get there early so you can put all your luggage on the racks. I was forced to sleep with all my belongings on my first trip because there was no more room for my stuff.

At the end of the cars are small squatter bathrooms unleashing your fury on the tracks below, hot drinking water dispensers for tea and instant noodles, and an ad-hoc smoker's lounge in the shifting passage above the actual connecting hitches of the cars. Every 45 minutes or so ladies come by with carts pitching [Chinese] overpriced baijo, beer, bottled water, instant noodles, and weird Chinese snacks. I accidentally ate dried squid from one of these carts thinking it some sort of shredded beef jerky. You can also jump off the train at longer stops for a quick pre-made dinner of dubious quality, but better than the "dinner" on the trains.

Cramped? Absolutely. Everything in China is, but the difference is that you have a 2.5x6 foot space all to yourself. If you have a middle or top bunk, that is. If you're on a bottom bunk, you unofficially trade off usable access to the night table for exclusive rights to your bed. The folks on top, who don't have the same headroom you have, use the bottom bed as a couch during waking hours. I was lucky to have a middle bunk my first two train rides, but karma caught up and I was the couch-giver on my way down from Beijing.

The beautiful thing about Chinese sleeper trains is that it showcases the true spirit of the Chinese. Food and drink rations become communal. I don't know if it's whether I'm a foreigner or not, but during lunch and dinner random strangers would reach around the wall and hand me a beer. Handfuls of fruits and nuts are always being shoved toward me. I even had one neighbor buy me a dinner in the restaurant car against my will. No matter how hard I tried, they would never take my own rations. It's hard for an American to adjust to the sheer generosity of Asians. You always feel awkward after accepting the gift. You can't not take the gift if you refuse twice and it's still being pushed forward with an eager smile.

The flip side is the innate Chinese curiosity mixed with the lack of any respect for privacy. People walk up and pull down your book to see what you're reading. Some will even try reading a little bit outloud. English-speakers will stop you in whatever your doing - eating, reading, spacing out - to practice their English. Neighbors try to talk with you know matter how much you try to prove you can't speak Chinese. Unlike in the streets, they're infinitely slower so that you have a chance to understand them. I eventually learned to use this as a prop for practicing Chinese by having passengers help me with pronunciations out of my dictionary. I'm not lying when I say I think my command of Chinese improved by 50% in those 50-odd hours.

To be continued...

Tags: Treyopia stories trains train travel China Chinese Tianjin Shenzhen