It's been a little bit since I've written a real entry...I've probably spent way too much of my online time waiting for www.espn.com to load, which for some reason is consistently slow in China. For those of you are aren't as big of a sports fan as I am, in the past week, the Philadelphia Phillies won the NL East after being 7 down a mere 17 games before but then lost in 3 to the Colorado Rockies, the hottest team in baseball. So Philly will - once again - have to wait til next year. Additionally, Stanford's football team - which espn described as "lowly" on their website - beat USC, the #2 team in the nation 24-23. It was USC's first home loss since 2001 when they were beaten by, you guessed it, Stanford.
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Camille, my friend from high school who is currently teaching in Hunan, came to visit this past week, as the PRC celebrated its birthday (and we celebrated having a week off from work). We went to all of the requisite sites, including the Great Wall, where we did a exhausting 10km trek from 景山岭 to 司马台. Both sites are farther from Beijing than the place where most tourists go and the views are even more impressive. (see pictures on facebook, once i get around to posting them).
Anyway, at the Great Wall, there are local women who spend their days pestering tourists to buy various souvenirs. A group attached themselves to Camille, Zi and I, one of which even walked with us for what had to be a few kilometers. She told us about random things, and at the end, we were expected to buy something from her - T-shirts - which we knowingly paid way too much for. She said she was a farmer from a local village, trying to put her two kids through school, in a place where you can't make enough money farming. This very well could have been true, especially since in most places in China, you can't make enough money just farming. Stories of people left behind as China has rapidly developed always sadden me, and, like in this case, make it more likely that I will feel sorry for them and spend more money, as this woman knew.
I thought about it later, though, especially the paradox. I had described this woman to myself as "being left behind as China has developed," but she has also greatly benefited from this development selling her souvenirs to tourists. And she probably makes a decent living, especially by the standards in her village, doing so. China is such a complicated place.
1 comment:
Sorry about your team - it ran into a freight train that still hasn't gone off its rails yet.
And this Pritchard guy is the real thing. I watched that game, and I watched his eyes. We have a coach, and we have a quarterback. And now we'll get recruits. It's just kind of awesome that it happened this way, because games like that, for me, are what sports is all about.
Taking what that woman said as given, I would just go back to our discussion Zhang Qi's class when Jason was talking out of his ass (he admitted it afterwards, remember?) about people always having a choice. She doesn't have a choice (if she's telling the truth). And although she didn't have a choice back on the farm, either, I wonder whether she would have felt more control and purpose back in that situation. I'm not sure - I just wonder. As for money, it really just doesn't seem that important besides feeding your kids and being richer than the next guy. I feel like we've been through this before, though...
just wanted to react to a non-sports part of this post
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