M A C V A Y S I A

The tragic story of that little girl who died recently in Guangzhou after being hit by a van and ignored by passersby has me reflecting a lot on the year I spent there. This essay is not about her, but I feel like iin some ways it is. It was based in part on a couple of blog posts I wrote while living in China, and appeared in a book called Down the Block: An Anthology of City Life, which was published in the US a couple of years ago.

I put this on Facebook yesterday and some friends wanted to share it; since my privacy settings are set quite high, I don’t know how widely the note could be shared, so I’m putting it here.

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So there I was one cool, crisp night, on the side of one of the busiest streets in Guangzhou, China, wrestling with a vagrant. He had a strong grip, as did an accomplice who jumped in to keep me from getting away. A fellow Canadian who just happened to be passing by with his Chinese wife entered the fray, to even the odds. My Malaysian wife Leen, who had been left alone (a white man apparently represented a bigger payoff than a brown-skinned woman), dove in along with the Canadian man’s wife, finally tipping the odds in my favour. In a tangle of arms and legs, I somehow managed to break free.

“Run, Baby!” yelled Leen. “Run!”

I sprinted along the sidewalk, zigging and zagging through the ever-present crowd, who seemed completely oblivious to the sight of a foreigner on the run. I was moving fast, but so was my pursuer. I could hear him behind me, his footsteps, his breathing, his voice. He was screaming at me, a shrill cry that shot across the distance between us and clawed at me. I veered right and headed for the safety of the Garden Hotel.

When I reached the brightly-lit front entrance I turned around and there he was, stopped dead in his tracks. He knew the hotel was forbidden territory, a place where people with money are greeted with smiles, and people like him are chased away by security guards. He screamed again, really crying this time, then turned and walked back into the night that had spit him out at me.

Wow, I thought. For a five-year-old, he sure has a hell of a grip.

Yeah, so he was about five. Maybe six, I don’t know. But damn it, he was strong.

It all began when Leen and I took the number 862B bus into the city so we could take some money out of the ATM at the Garden Hotel, one of the few ATMs in Guangzhou that liked Malaysian bank cards. We got off the bus and were strolling over a pedestrian bridge that crossed Guangzhou Dadao Bei when suddenly I noticed a small child walking along with us. He gently held onto my leg, saying something in Chinese but obviously asking for money.

Now I should point out here that I’m a big softie. Some might say I’m a sucker but no, I’m not one of those, because I know the games people play and I don’t hand out money to every Tom, Dick, Harry or Wong who asks for it. But I am most definitely a softie. And that cost me that night, not money (well, not much) but a little chunk of my evening.

Before we could go down the other side of the bridge, the kid wrapped himself around my right leg and tried to keep me there. I tried to shake him off but he was stuck like he belonged there. That’s when I met that Canadian guy. Turns out they had gotten him before too. I say they because suddenly there were three kids. I made the mistake of suggesting Leen give one of them some change, and that just spurred the other two on. The one on my right leg wasn’t going anywhere, and the cuteness of it all was wearing off really fast.

“Just keep walking,” the Canadian guy told me. Oh sure, I thought. I’ll just walk down these steps with a kid stuck to my leg. It did sound absurd, but in the end that’s what I did. I limped down the stairs like I was wearing a full-leg cast, all the while yelling, “Get off me, you little…!” And when I got to the bottom one of the other two kids wrapped himself around my left leg, at the request of the first kid, who wasn’t about to let me get away without a fight. Leen, the Canadian guy and his wife all did their best to pry the pint-sized muggers away from me. A tall, dapper-looking western man walked past, shaking his head. “You poor sod,” he clucked in a British accent.

This ‘poor sod’ got away. But that kid almost had me. In a way, he did have me. Because I couldn’t stop thinking about him, and the many others I had seen just like him. I would see many more like him as well. Yes, that kid got me all right.

China is not what many people think it is, especially in the cities, and especially in the city of Guangzhou. The economic center of Guangdong, the wealthiest and most populous province in China, Guangzhou is — in some ways, anyway — no more communist than any city in America. There seems to be no limit to how rich — or poor — people can get. Tens of millions of people from all over China have added themselves to the local population in search of prosperity. A few do very well; some manage to get by. But many of them, local and outsider alike, get chewed up and swallowed down by the concrete beast that is Guangzhou.

Like anywhere else, people in Guangzhou do whatever they can to make ends meet. But when there’s very, very little in the way of a social safety net, ‘whatever they can’ could be pretty much anything. I often found myself impressed by the ability of the Chinese to find solutions to whatever problems they faced. I also often found myself frustrated by the short-sightedness of many of their solutions, but I understood: survival is a day-by-day thing. In China, you do whatever work you can find. If you can’t find work, you work anyway. And if your hard work doesn’t bring in enough money, instead of complaining you just do more work.

Doing more work means putting a bundle the size of a small house on the back of your motorcycle and carting it across town. It means taking a job hauling bricks at a dangerous construction site, whether you’re a young man or an old one — or a young woman or an old one. And, if all else fails, it means begging on the streets. If even that doesn’t feed you…well, there’s no telling what you might be driven to do, right?

So I actually felt a little guilty. I probably should have just given the kid one more yuan and continued on my way. It wouldn’t have hurt me, but it would really help a poor person. Unfortunately, many people in China, Malaysia, and many other countries would disagree. “Don’t give them any money,” they might say. “They’re lazy.” “They’re con artists.” But the fact is, while some of them are, many of them aren’t. Sometimes it’s easy to spot the scammers, but most of the time it’s not. It rankles me when people can look at a toothless, filthy old hag begging for scraps and say she’s a lazy cheat. People with that kind of attitude are in complete denial of the fact that there are poor, homeless people in the world. That old hag might be lucky to pull in enough money to buy a small meal by the end of the day. I’d rather give her the benefit of the doubt.

That kid? I suppose he was both a scammer and someone to be pitied. Some scammers — the real scammers — employ whole teams of dirty-faced but cute kids to look as pathetic as possible and rake in some easy cash. It’s not fair to the kids, who probably don’t see much of that money, if any.

We did manage to salvage that evening, thanks to the nice dinner we had with the Canadian man and his Chinese wife — and the fact that we didn’t have to go back over the pedestrian bridge to catch the 862B back home. Good thing, too, because if I had seen that kid again I would have shown him a thing or two. Seriously. Really, I would have hurt his feelings or something. Or maybe I would have given him money. But only a little, really. So there.

When Leen’s birthday rolled around a few months later, and it just happened to be on a weekend, we thought the perfect way to celebrate would be to venture into the city for a day of shopping, eating and merry-making. If the city you’re in is Guangzhou — and you don’t have a crippling phobia of large crowds — the place to go for all those things is Beijing Road.

Beijing Road is a pedestrian-only street, unless you count the cops who ride up and down in their police golf carts. Speaking of counting, this time I counted the number of times I was approached by people selling various fake and/or stolen goods: eleven. It’s funny because I could see them coming a mile away. They’re like heat-seeking missiles, and the heat is generated by the wads of money they think every white man has in his wallet. If I caught them quickly enough I could simply wave them off and say “Bu yao” (don’t want) before they opened their mouths. But sometimes they managed to start the sales pitch, which is usually something like, “Watchy, watchy?”

Sometimes they’re not selling watches. Sometimes they’re selling everything. Sometimes if you say you’re not interested in a watch they’ll say, “Armani suit?” Then they’ll say, “Laptop computer?” And then they’ll say (while tracing an hourglass shape with their hands), “Pretty girl?” And if you don’t want the pretty girl they’ll make one last pitch: “Watchy, watchy?” I got the sales pitch eleven times from one end of Beijing Road to the other–not far–and I told Leen that the twelfth was going to earn a reply of “Fucky offy,” or “Kissy my assy.” We both thought that would be pretty funny, but we reached the end of the street and had to cap that day’s number at eleven. No witty comebacks this time.

After I treated the birthday girl and myself to some ridiculously expensive ice-cream, we walked towards the riverfront. There we bought the last few tickets for the 7:10PM cruise and hung around for a bit to wait for it since we still had plenty of time. A cute little boy came up and offered to sell me a couple of red roses, and when I declined he pushed them into my hand and said, “Free!”

Well, I thought, if they’re free, I’ll take them. Then I felt a little guilty and thought, Hey, this kid needs the money, I should give him a buck or two. Then I slapped myself and thought, Hey! That’s his game! The kid wants me to feel sorry for him and just give him the money anyway, like those kids who jump out and clean your windshield when you’re at a red light and then ask for you to give them money for it! I don’t want to give him any money at all, the cunning little… And then I smiled as I thought, Hey, this cute little kid is pretty clever then, eh? And a good businessman, too. I won’t give him money because I feel guilty, I’ll give him money because I think he’s damn smart. And because I promised Leen I’d get her flowers for her birthday and this really makes it easier for me. Way to go, kid. So I gave him three yuan and sent him on his way. At least this kid didn’t latch onto my leg.

We were hanging around, waiting for our turn on the river cruise, when the kid reappeared and approached Leen. I had already given her the flower, but there he was again, trying to sell more. I thought I would have to argue with him — not easy when you don’t speak much of the local language — but suddenly a cop strode up and smacked the kid on the back of the head. You poor sod, I thought. The little flower-seller scampered off, but soon another kid–a little girl, much smaller and much cuter than the first kid–was pushing more roses at Leen. I should have seen what was coming next.

Before we knew it the kid was wrapped around Leen’s leg and held on like her life depended on it. Our Chinese friend Ice and several passers-by had to work quite hard to pull the kid away from Leen. The little girl started crying as they tried to pry her little arms and legs away, and she only let go after Ice yelled something in a scary, enough-with-the-messing-around voice. It’s sad, really, because these kids are really just pawns being used by adult ringleaders who do none of the work but take all of the money. Before we joined the queue to get on the ship I saw a lady about my age discreetly hand out roses to some of the kids and then skulk off into the shadows to watch her tiny minions wreak havoc on unsuspecting tourists.

Again I found myself feeling sorry for the kid. Another ‘poor sod’. Maybe her life really did depend on whether she could bring in enough money. I don’t know. But I know China is not a classless communist utopia. China is a place where money rules, just like anywhere else, perhaps even more so. China is a place where you’d better have money if you have a serious accident, or else you’ll be stuck in a big room with a bunch of other non-paying patients, put on a drip, and checked on every few hours until you pay up, recover, or die, whichever comes first. I’ve seen the third option come first, after a student at the college where we were teaching English hit his head in a classroom and was rushed to the nearest hospital. His family didn’t have money because they had spent everything on his education. By the time the college’s staff and students managed to pool together enough money for lifesaving surgery, it was too late — the kid had gone without the surgery for too long. His parents lost their only child, their only hope for a brighter future.

There are several different ways you can react when you catch a glimpse of the scab-covered underbelly of a bustling city and the country in which it sits. Perhaps the most interesting thing about China, and its wealthiest, most populous city, is that you don’t have to react in just one way. You don’t just see the underbelly, you see the whole dragon — in all its magnificent beauty and at the same time its fearsome ugliness. China leaves you with competing, contradictory visions. You can have every possible reaction to China.

A lot of visions, good and bad, come to me when I remember Guangzhou. Among them are visions of parents whose children are the most precious things in their lives. And then there are visions of children whose lives are precious to no one. There are visions of people who do whatever it takes to survive in a place where they can climb real high or sink real low. There are visions of people who have done both.

And still there are visions of that little boy who stuck to me like glue and then chased me all the way to the Garden Hotel. I’ll always remember the conflicting reactions that were stirred in me — the urge to swat the kid away competing with the urge to help him. Annoyance and pity — I’ll always remember feeling both of those as I stood breathless near the lobby of the Garden Hotel, just a few steps away from a completely different world. And I’ll always wonder how that kid is doing now. If I go back to Guangzhou, maybe I’ll see him clinging to some foreigner’s leg. “You poor sod,” I’ll say as I walk by. “You poor sod.”