Beggars are one essential scene in the so-called rising China of the 21st 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 21st 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.
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