A Job for Everyone

A Job for Everyone

China fascinates me.

Everyone who wants a job in China has a job.  The government guarantees you a job and an income.  Sometimes people start their own business, sometimes the government starts a business and puts someone in charge and someone to work.  If you are breathing in China, you can work.  Of course, there are various degrees of working, and while you can always have a job, sometimes if you want a good job, you’ll have to find something better yourself. 

Additionally, there are no real homeless people in China.  It took me and some friends a while to figure this out.  People don’t talk about it, they don’t discuss what’s going on, nor what the solution is.  You have to get that whole thing from observation and from asking and understanding the “right” leading questions.  The most interesting this about their homeless solution is the fact that it would never, ever work in America, and the reasons behind that.

On a regular basis, you will see people dragging around their luggage.  For the most part, Chinese people don’t enjoy travel, so, it’s hard to figure out what’s going on.  We had a chance encounter while apartment hunting that finally tied everything in, and we noticed things more and more afterwards.  There are many apartments that are available for rent at any given time.  While we were looking at apartments for a friend last month in Fumin, we noticed that there were a couple of places that we went to that had a family and an older girl living in a place.  We didn’t clue in until later when we saw a place that had 4 or 5 single women living in it (there were 3 in residence, but enough bedding, cell phones and other evidence that suggested many more living in this 2 bedroom place.)   We started talking to various people, and we found out that there is an online newsboard that informs people of a place to live for a minimum of a month or so while they find new people to lease.  They lease the apartment at a much lower rate with the stipulation that the people keep things clean, up to date, and everything in order.  In America, you’d call them squatters, but that’s far from the same situation here.  The places that you go in where these “homeless people” live are immaculate, everything works, and if you rent, you end up in a place that is immaculately clean when these people move on.  I can only imagine how trashed a place would be that housed “American homeless”.

What fascinates me most are the people who wander around begging.  These people have jobs, they’re liars.  Every mainland Chinese knows that they are liars and ignore them, outright.  Foreigners give them money, and that’s the problem.  Because they talk to many foreigners they pick up a lot of English, making them even more employable, but it’s far more lucrative to beg and lie.  All I can say is, STOP GIVING THEM MONEY!!!  Look at them with disgust for the criminals they are, ignore their appearance, they are not good people, and they can work if they want to. 

On occasion you’ll see people sleeping on the side of the road, or in the treed areas of a walkway.  These people are not homeless.  If you look at your surroundings, you’ll usually see a construction site in the area.  These are workers at the construction sites who don’t want to live in their cubicles, preferring instead to sleep in the quiet of the walkway and among “nature”.  This allows them to meditate or do yoga, or have just a bit more space.  Giving these people money puzzles them, stop doing it.  They’re not homeless and they work hard for their money.