The Great Race 2: Racing Against One Self

Went to the annual physical check, found out new problems on top of old, un-receding ones. Had a new revelation: I'm in a race against my own self, my own body with its ticking clocks. I shall rash to complete what I'm destined to do in this life, or rather, start embarking on it, before the defects of my body catch up with me, with my superior yet dependent self: my will.

The Great Race 1: Racing Against the Giant

Watching another news break-out about another huge railway constructing costs billions found out to be cut into pieces and sub-contracted to suspicious groups including one bunch of peasant workers with neither experience or certificate, headed by the figure of nobody but a small-time chef.

The TV screen showed a handful of lonesome great columns, which were erected to support the great railway, now standing uncertainly, nakedly with rough finish, in a bleak countryside of nothing. They were supposed to be filled with concretes, but now it's known their thick bellies are fed with not only concretes, but also cheaper fillings of gravels.

I suddenly had an revelation: I'm in a great race � against the giant turning loose in its head-long, feverish rash to nowhere but a headier space. We're rushing against each other for time: I need to get out of here before it catches up with me, before they catch up with me: its numerous physical, financial, social and political bombs buried under its numerous bridges, highway, skyscrapers, subways and other 21^st century temples saluting the so-called awakening dragon and its mythical powers.

Beggars vs. Dishonest Workers: which one is viler?

Beggars are one essential scene in the so-called rising China of the 21^st century. Reason simple and straightforward: we're too many. So we have more waste, left-overs and defects than any other too.

While I sometimes gave to the old beggars, often run away from children beggars (for the look in their eyes � hatred, canning, distrust and aggression that akin to criminals instead of children in my imagination � the adult and old beggars generally do not betray any emotion in their muddy eyes), I always despised adult beggars with whole limes � why don't they go to find a job? Haven't they hands and legs?

 

But with the revelation of recycled cooking-oil from restaurant left-overs � so dubbed "gutter oil" as another ingenious true Chinese invention of the 21^st century � it's sheer scale and sophistication, its whole system of operation as a mature industry, its penetration far beyond occasional patronage by nameless digs, appalled me more by the unspoken collapse of moral system in this society, than by its hideous products, I began to re-think: beggars and dishonest workers, which one is viler?

 

These are people with whole limes and functioning brain, who don't want to sit there and beg. They work hard to get the restaurant left-overs smuggled across provinces to be "recycled" into yellow-fluid that looks like low-quality cooking oil which they don't use for their own meals but sell to whoever what to make money the cheap way. Now, are they just ignorant people, dishonest workers, or monsters without hearts, or monsters who have eaten their own hearts?  

Now I wish they just gave up their abhorrent trade, go into the street, sit and beg. And I'll re-think my beggar-giving strategy not as a charity but as a program to promote no-harm existence.