(3) Out and About

We have started taking family trips to sites around Chengdu on Sunday afternoons. By the time Sam has woken up from his nap and we’ve all rallied ourselves it’s a short excursion, but an hour or two of public space is long enough for the boys anyway, and then we find somewhere interesting for dinner. We have tended not to do much of this until recently, partly because whenever we considered going somewhere at the weekend, we would think of the crowds and the attention the boys would get, and usually decide it was preferable to stay and play in our compound. But now that Sam is old enough to run around by himself we have decided to explore a little more.

Last week we went to Tianfu Square in the center of Chengdu. This is a large plaza overlooked by a 20 foot tall statue of Chairman Mao, his arm raised in a revolutionary salute. The square itself is new although the statue has been there for a long time. Ethan said that there didn’t used to be a central square in Chengdu, so during the June 4 protests local students had to gather at a nearby department store, which they burned down. Yes, here in Chengdu even political protest takes place in a shopping mall. This does beg the question of why the authorities would want to provide an alternative location such as a large central square. One can only assume that the square is extremely well monitored and protected from such possibilities. Apparently China is the second most observed society in the world...... second only to the UK.

Nonetheless we had a fun hour or so running round in circles and taking photos in front of the Mao statue. If the space is big enough the boys can run away from unwelcome attention. Sam was oblivious to it all until recently, but he has started to resent it. The sight of a group of strangers in formation, shrieking endearments and bearing down on you at high speed must be a little scary, especially if you are under 3 feet tall. So he has started taking tips from his brother, who tends to lash out at anyone who dares to approach him. The pair of them karate kicking together doesn’t exactly decrease the levels of attention.

The news from Xiao Long’s extended family is that her friend Xiao Wu’s ex-husband has been staying in her apartment for the past month. Xiao Wu is the friend who was driven to jump off a bridge by her husband’s behaviour, but after recovering from that sh eventually ran off to their hometown, taking all his money with her. He must have got some of it back because Xiao Long was telling me that he just lost everything again in some kind of phony pyramid investment scheme and is totally down on his luck. He was persuaded to invest by his older sister, who lost even more than he did. After Xiao Wu left him and they got divorced, but he followed her back home and they continued to see each other. Xiao Wu opened a tea house and mahjong parlour and he tried to help out, but the business didn’t do well. As Xiao Long said, you can’t make money from something like that if you are too fond of playing mahjong yourself. So Xiao Wu is thinking of returning to Chengdu, but Xiao Long said she won’t help her find a job this time, not after she walked out on her last family so suddenly. Not to mention letting her beloved Sam fall over and whack his head on a stone step.

I am amazed at the lengths Xiao Long and her family and friends will go to help each other out. They don’t have medical insurance or any kind of social welfare safety net, so they rely on each other. If someone is sick or has a financial setback, everyone else chips in and clears out their bank account if necessary to pay the bills. It’s a different kind of social welfare. People here can be indifferent to the plight of a stranger, cycling right by someone who has been hurt in a traffic accident, or pausing only for lengthy rubbernecking before hurrying on their way, but they will give everything they have to someone in their circle.

In the case of Xiao Wu’s husband, Xiao Long said she and her husband don’t have enough money right now to lend him any, so all they could do was offer him a place to sleep and eat for a while. So he is living with them and working as a pedicab driver. This is gruelling work, he is out of the door at 8 am and sometimes doesn’t get home until 2 or 3 in the morning, but he can make a lot of money from it, nearly three thousand yuan since he started a month ago. He and his first wife are jointly responsible for their daughter’s college tuition and living expenses. He is supposed to send her several hundred a month plus half of the annual tuition, but recently the mother has paid all the tuition herself from her wages in a factory in Guangdong. When he goes back to their hometown he lives with his younger sister, who is doing OK according to Xiao Long, a regular family who own their own apartment and earn about two thousand yuan a month. His other daughter, the one he had with Xiao Wu, lives with her grandmother. I’ve never met the guy but it strikes me that there are a lot of capable women keeping him afloat.