Beggars and Laowai

All societies have beggars.   Homeless people.   In the United States, they tend to hangout near bus stations, parks, underpasses.  Downtown.    Every city has it’s own unique homeless population.  There are shelters.  Soup kitchens. 

When I take my children to China with me I always need to remind them of a few things:   crossing a street, noiseless scooters on the sidewalks……and the homeless population/beggars they will inevitably come across.   These types of scenes in China are particularly brutal, and shocking.   A real opener for a sheltered grade schooler and a newly minted Jr High student.   If not careful, these can be real party poopers for China Scholar wannabes.    I want to state clearly that these scenes are not on every street corner, and I do not wish to exaggerate in anyway their presence.  Every big city on the planet has the same phenomena.    The problem with this in China is, well…..every city is a big city.

When I first came to China I was a bit surprised that homelessness  existed.   I lived in Guangzhou, the wealthiest city in China at the time.   I usually would see old ladies, or a group of blind folks, but that was really about it.   I remembered that no one gave to these people.   There weren’t many.   They would be stationed at the bottom of a pedestrian bridge.   One of my most vivid memories from that time in the over two decades ago was the scene of an elderly woman stopping near another elderly woman.   I watched as she took something out from inside her pants, a bundle of cloth, unwrapped it for several seconds, than opened up a purse.   She took out paper currency, and put it in the dish of the lady at the bottom of the overhead walkway.  

That was the only time in my one year in Guangzhou that I saw someone give money to a beggar. 

I was for the longest time perplexed by this. 

Why do people simply not give more?

Than I realized the answer was twofold, both cynical and pragmatic.

How so?

China was, and is, simply used to poverty.  It is nothing shocking, nor revolting.  We in the West may not see the level of poverty that we see in China, and thus react differently.    However the Chinese do.  That is because the vast majority of Chinese come from the countryside, where they may not have grown up with things like running water, or flushable toilets.     Their level of tolerance is far higher than ours.

When one sees a young person give something to a beggar, than one sees a person from the city.  someone “soft”,  not familiar with the deprivations of the countryside.
The sad side of this situation is that most people feel that “beggars” are not “poor”.  
“They make more money than I do”, is a common refrain I hear. Society here is both callous and harsh.  Warm to friends, yes, but like all societies less open to strangers.    The base belief that beggars are organized inhibits a charitable reaction. 

Another is , “they don’t keep the money they receive”.    Or the phrase I hear the most when addressed with an unfortunate moment,

“If I gave something to every guy I saw I’d be just like them”.

I find there is a bit of truth to this.

I do agree the audacity of the occasional  beggar is something to behold. 

Begging in China is “begging with Chinese characteristics”.

I’ve encountered scams, and scenes too shocking to be true.   Quite often they aren’t.
When recently living in Shenzhen, in the middle of the city, I was frequently accosted by a child(always a different one) that would say “hello”, to get my attention, with a couple of adults trailing her.   Once she’d had my attention she’d tell me in Chinese she was hungry.   This happened several times.  Finally after a few encounters, I  told the Baoan, not 15 feet away, that these people were bothering me.   Not expecting me to be able to say Chinese, these people promptly fled. 

Was I a jerk?  Maybe

Did I really expect the Baoan to help?   Yes, I did.  Why?  Because I understand full well that China loses face when a foreigner minding his own business is harassed.   
It can be frustrating to stand out in the crowd.   I’ve been accosted  in the strangest of places. 

Shenzhen subways

Train stations while waiting in line to buy a ticket.   I’m literally buying a train ticket and exchanging money when the beggar shows up out of nowhere.   The only laowai in line.   Why isn’t she asking the 27 Chinese behind me for anything? 

On the subway in Beijing I was frequently asked for change.   Talk about awkward.  How does one react to a child with a plastic bowl in hand, standing in front of you for 5 full seconds, while the rest of the car is both curious to what I will do, and simultaneously embarrassed at the behavior of the child(not enough to give, of course.  They know he’s not keeping it).

But methinks enough Chinese have seen the “beggar single out laowai” enough to even become desensitized to that!

When living in China how can one not become a product of one’s environment and be hardened to the poverty around you?  It’s impossible.    It’s quite frankly hard not to become jaded.  Indeed, it’s only a matter of time.

I got tired of the scene.  Being singled out for help.  Finally, that day in Shenzhen when I was buying a train ticket for Guangzhou I burst.   Knowing that the Chinese behind me in line had no choice but to listen to me, I shamelessly dressed down the beggar.

“If your own people won’t help you why should I? , I asked.

“Why aren’t you asking them for money??”, I continued. 

The Chinese in line just stared at me.  No one said a word, and no one offered her a dime.  I sure as hell didn’t.   I’d found the justification I needed to tell someone with an obvious need to piss off.  
Now what will Jesus say should I actually get into the Pearly Gates? 

“Fletcher, the bottom line is you didn’t give.   Off to Hell you go now.”

But…..

“No buts now….we’re all about results here.” 

Poof!

Next thing I know I’m melting.

Two instances I’ve encountered bring home the frustration I have with the Chinese attitude towards giving, and the justification for not doing so.

The most galling instance of enticement I’ve seen in China has been the” mom eating out of trashcan with a baby in her arms”.   I’ve seen this twice. 

The first time I saw it I stopped in my tracks.  I slowly walked past and for the next 30 seconds tried to figure out what I had just seen.   No one helped her.   On my way back to the station I passed her again.  This time I saw the plastic bag in the trash can.  She was simply eating out of a plastic bag, probably something she had been given, but while doing so kept looking up and in the direction of the crowd.   An obvious fake.   Scoundrel of the highest order!  Cad! 

Yet her theatrics were so extreme, that several Chinese themselves couldn’t believe what they had just seen.   Several looked backed upon passing her.  A sign of increasing wealth in the cities. 
I saw this scene again a year later on an overpass.  This time the lady(same one?) was simply putting her fingers to her lips without eating anything.  (No Oscar nomination for her. )

Have I given money?  Yes, I have, and I will tell you why.

Once on my way out to a bar, I was caught waiting for a taxi on a busy thoroughfare.   I was at the bottom of yet another pedestrian overpass.   I heard a noise and looked around.  It was dark.  Foot traffic up and down the stairs leading to the footbridge was light.  Yet I heard the sound of wooded blocks. My ears focused on the sound and I saw a shirtless man in trousers, legs paralyzed, with closely cropped hair using two hollow, wooden clogs to lift himself up, step by step to the cusp of the bridge itself.  His hands fit precisely into the wooden clogs.   With pure brute upper body strength he lifted his entire body one step at a time to the top.  It was quite a heave.  Each step had it’s own grunt.  There were maybe twenty steps.    Needless to say I was intensely overwhelmed by his effort.    Once again, I was left speechless by something I had seen in China, and didn’t know what to think or say.   

The fascinating thing about China is one can encounter such a moment at any given time, for many a different context.   Would I have noticed this fellow in the middle of the day, amidst the hordes?   Maybe.  Would I have stopped to ponder the situation.  Definitely not.   Only the quiet of night allowed me the time for introspection.    I followed him up the stairs and gave him 50 yuan.  Something I’d never done before.  I reasoned it was the cost of a Long Island.  So what the fuck.   (I justified to myself that he certainly earned it!)  And this is where perhaps me and my Chinese brethren diverge.    I can be broken down, and moved to emotion.   I just don’t think the average Chinese has it in him to feel the same.   Is it the lingering bitterness of knowing your share of the pie will probably never increase?    Has empathy for one’s fellow man become collateral damage?

I’ve wondered about the paradox of Face in China.  A proud society with a prickly sense of it’s place in the world, forever fighting a battle to minimize to outsiders what is wrong with it’s society, yet one can see everyday it’s  own people so willing to lay out on the street and in grand calligraphy fashion write out it’s problems for all to see.  

A mother writes about her son(asleep in her arms, of course) needing an operation.  (Can you help?)
The Big City has such an example at every major subway station.  Everyone’s story a bit different. 
Crowds gather, bored with their own lives, to read of someone else’s  sorrows, and misfortune.  Only to move on shortly afterwards and be replaced by somebody else.   China is surely the most public soap opera around.   Nobody gives anything.   No one talks to the person who has written his or her own personal sob story for all to see.   Instead heads merely bob up and down, from “the pitch” to the person. 

When it's not about the money

While living in Shanghai working for an American car company, I would often go to McDonalds for lunch.  I would frequently order out and simply eat my cheeseburger on the way back to the office.   I worked in Pudong.   About half way back to the office I frequently came across a group of kids.   It was as if they’d never been to McDonald’s before.    They’d stare at my food.   I’d shoo them away.   (this is my lunch!) I’d give in.  What am I supposed to do?   Asking for money is one thing, but asking for food solicits another reaction all it’s own.  Of course I gave the kid the burger.  

After a few more days of this I simply stopped going to McDonalds.    And I altered my route.
My wife’s reaction of course is totally different.    When back in Hangzhou for an extended stay I simply had to get out and get some “real” food.   Off to Ronald McDonald we went.   It was late at night.   Dragging my wife along, we got our munchies and out the door we went, eating happily along the way….until yet another kid saw me.  My wife was several feet behind.   She of course saw the kid and shouted out to me “don’t give him anything”. 

Well, again….it’s hard to turn down food to a kid.  He wasn’t asking for money.  Just for my damn cheeseburger.    Again, I wilted. 

My wife, slurping happily on her chocolate shake, yelled at me in her shrill voice.   Than proceeded to chastise me like a little kid.   My cute, dainty wife was aside her with what I’d done.
“You can’t give to everyone”, she said.

But-

“He’s part of a gang”

But he’s not asking for money

“He’s still part of a gang!”

My wife was really disappointed I had done that.  My view was he could only eat the burger and get full.  The burger itself had no tradable value.

Her view was I couldn’t bring my naĂŻve vision to China.  

She had a point.  All I can do is use my own nation as a reference.  How can a country where even the poor people have air conditioning and cable TV understand poverty?  Many of our poor people(and the rich) are very overweight.   

China has neither understanding, nor patience with our definition of poverty.  It scoffs at our Western concept of impoverishment.  And our solutions lose legitimacy as a result.  

Chinese are deep down inside afraid we are here to change China.   Our faces show kindness and benevolence.   But without question our goal is to dominate China.   To make it more like us.   But the Chinese like things the way they are, thank you.  This is a situation where fewer foreigners, not more, would be a good thing.   If the beggars knew they had no laowai to hit on, their activity would be less prevalent.  

I can’t say I follow that line of logic.


And so I wait for next summer.  We plan on climbing the Great Wall.  I can’t wait.  But I know my kids will have questions.    They will see things they’ve never seen before.   And I’m not sure I will know what  to say. 

Comments

  1. Really enjoying your blog, this post no exception. Agree with most of what you say above, but there's also a darker side that you haven't touched on.

    I first moved to China in 2002 (I'm a newbie compared to you). I was living in a 'small' city called Zhaoqing about an hour outside of Guangzhou. When I arrived, myself and the other foreign teachers there were routinely targeted by beggars. Once a kid grabbed my colleague, a 60 year woman, around the waist and would not let go until I prised them off. This happened several times. It was always the kids who approached us, but there were always an adult close by. I ended up having to be aggressive with them, shouting at them to clear off in my limited Chinese (Zou kai!) whenever they approached. Eventually this group left us alone as we never gave them anything.

    However, there were other groups, including young kids with deformities (generally deformed legs, meaning they couldn't walk). These would just lie on the ground, prostrate. And for a while I did give money to this lot. After all, 20 kuai was not much to me and these kids really needed it. Then a local told me that it was all run by the gangs. The kids with 'deformities' were given these deformities by being cut up by the gang when they were little more than babies. I was horrified and didn't believe it at first, but I trusted this person, it was verified by others, and the facts fit. I stopped giving money as it would only perpetuate the cycle, with more youngsters being 'recruited' to be crippled beggars.

    I saw other scams. 'Homeless' mothers with babies they couldn't afford to feed. 'Homeless' mothers who seemed to change babies over time if you watched carefully. Basically the baby was just a prop, though I never found out if they borrowed it (I read an news article somewhere about people hiring their kids out to 'beggars'), or whether this was also gang driven with a darker explanation.

    Anyway, I became hardened and skeptical about any begging that goes on in China. Most of it is just fake (what a surprise in China, right?) and some of it is far darker...

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    Replies
    1. Stephen, I'm taken aback by your belief that these deformities may happen on purpose. I hope that's just not the case. Societal belief that alot of this "street activity" is organized is without question based on reality. Still, logic dictates that not everyone is under the thumb of gangs. It's those poor souls that suffer the most.

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  2. Hi Fletcher,

    I'd love to be wrong about it. The locals definitely believed that was the case, but of course you can't believe everything you hear.

    I just did a google search for "china beggars mutilated" and there are stories about this sort of thing, most notably a village in Anhui where they apparently create the beggars and then sell them on. Just inhumane. If true.

    I wouldn't expect this sort of thing to be widespread, but I do think it happens. And you're right - it's those poor souls that suffer the most.

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