The beggar's play: poverty, coercion, and performance in Shenyang, China.

The beggar's play: poverty, coercion, and performance in Shenyang, China. It is as if [the beggar] were saying, 'But it is obvious,there is no getting away from it, here I am begging from you and by thisfact alone I have a claim on you. So what can you be thinking of? Whydon't you do something about it?' (Levi-Strauss 1974:136) Beggars are a common sight on the urban streets of the northeasternChinese city of Shenyang; they include people from all age groups andboth genders. Old people, their hair left loose, tangled and white,their clothes and shoes muddied and full of holes, sit on the sidewalksin front of shopping centers and fast-food restaurants, with batteredmetal bowls in front of them. As a few odd coins are thrown in, they bowto passersby muttering "Thank you, thank you, save my life(jiuming)." Or deformed children, their limbs bent at crookedangles, hard flat pieces of rubber tied to their waists, drag theirbodies across the pavement on their hands. Men doze on the streets,wrapped in old winter coats with their bowl laid out in front of them,while women tow dirty children behind them, pleading with pedestrians.As they amble amblea slower, non-racing version of pace gait in horses.broken amblehas many characteristics of the amble but there are four beats to the gait with each foot contacting the ground independently. Called also single-foot. or crawl through the crowds on the main streets, the floodof humanity parts and flows around them, and they are left as woundedand dirty islands in an otherwise endless stream of people. The visceral reaction to the beggar's appearance leads me tofocus, in this article, on how beggars (qigai) and begging (qitao) areunderstood and imagined by urban Chinese residents. As the historianHanchao Lu (1999) points out in his study of begging in republicanShanghai, Chinese popular culture at the time attached multiple meaningsto beggars: as pitiful wretches, as parasites who lived richly on thenaive generosity of almsgivers, and even as disguised deities orimmortals who came to test the compassion of humans. In the contemporarypost-Mao era, beggars have been recruited into wider social discoursesabout modernization and development, about the success or failure ofChina's capitalist economic experiment and reform efforts. It is,in the words of one group of Chinese scholars "a greatlydisconcerting dis��con��cert?tr.v. dis��con��cert��ed, dis��con��cert��ing, dis��con��certs1. To upset the self-possession of; ruffle. See Synonyms at embarrass.2. phenomenon" that should "attract the highestdegree of attention from the Party and government" (Wang, Xu andJiang 2003:13). Their greatest concerns are that begging will negativelyinfluence China's "favorable international image" andaffect international trade, tourism, and foreign relations Foreign relations may refer to: Diplomacy, the art and practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of groups or nations Foreign policy, a set of political goals that seeks to outline how a particular country will interact with other countries of the . Key to thesediscourses is the idea that beggars are now more than a simple domesticissue; by attracting the attention of foreign others, they hold thepotential to tarnish tarnish,n 1. surface discoloration or loss of luster by metals. Under oral conditions, it often results from hard and soft deposits.2. a chemical process by which a metal surface is discolored or its luster destroyed. China's international presence. Chineseinterpretations of the begging phenomenon, and of beggars' stories,motivations, and morality, therefore implicate im��pli��cate?tr.v. im��pli��cat��ed, im��pli��cat��ing, im��pli��cates1. To involve or connect intimately or incriminatingly: evidence that implicates others in the plot.2. foreign viewpoints andethics, drawing upon both the perceptions and presumed reactions offoreign visitors. As a result, I pay attention in this article to theinvolvement of foreigners in Chinese urban affairs, to the actions andinterpretations by foreigners of the begging phenomenon, and to howChinese people The following is a '''list of famous Chinese-speaking/writing people. Note in Chinese names, the family name is typically placed first (for example, the family name of "Xu Feng" is "Xu"). both accept and contest their interpretations. However, I want to resist making beggars the hapless pawns aroundwhom these particular internationalist dramas play out. Beggars are farmore than passive recipients of alms; they are aware of these socialdiscourses, of how their appearances and stories influence the emotionsof others, and of the silent commentary their presence makes onChina's modernist narrative. As I will argue in this article,beggars do not wait for coins, but attempt to create for Chinese urbanresidents a spectacle of poverty and flesh which both shocks and compelspotential donors--constituting, as Levi-Strauss writes at the beginningof this article, a "claim" on those who pass by. In an ironictwist, it is the prosperous urban residents of China, drawn reluctantlyinto the beggars' performances, who often find their own agencycurtailed and themselves one coin poorer as a result. I argue here thatthis curious inversion prompts much of the popular ambivalence towardsbeggars as a whole. It is enabled, not simply by the act of claiming,but by the narrative tenor of the claim itself which, evoking new socialand structural inequalities (rich versus poor, urban versus rural)reminds urban residents of their rural origins and of the contingency oftheir own relative affluence. The periodic encounters betweenpedestrians and beggars are not simply personal or one-to-one meetingson the streets, but evoke larger social formations and cultural scripts.(1) The poor rural beggar is a spectral and uncanny reminder of what theurban resident has ostensibly os��ten��si��ble?adj.Represented or appearing as such; ostensive: His ostensible purpose was charity, but his real goal was popularity. transcended and left behind: poverty,backwardness, reliance on the state and on others. (2) Begging,conceived here as a type of meaningful cultural performance, perhapseven a type of street theater street theatern.Dramatization of social and political issues, usually enacted outside, as on the street or in a park. Also called guerrilla theater.Noun 1. , traps potential donors in an alreadyprescribed role--as givers--and leaves them only one way out of theplay: to perform that role or to disrupt the entire performance by, asit were, stomping off the stage. The discomfort felt in such an actionis not shame in the traditional sense, but something more akin to whatGeertz (1973:402) calls "stage fright" among the Balinese; asense that, like the actor fumbling his or her lines, the person willbecome the object of conscious attention by those around. (3) Therefore, begging in China is not simply an economic problem,although its presence is rooted in the structural inequality of urbanpoverty. Rather, begging is a performative per��for��ma��tive?adj.Relating to or being an utterance that peforms an act or creates a state of affairs by the fact of its being uttered under appropriate or conventional circumstances, as a justice of the peace uttering enactment of the relations ofpoverty, indexing its perceived causes, ethics, and solutions. Suchideas about begging are not fixed, but are culturally variable. InShenyang, the methods of mendicancy display striking historicalcontinuities to those practiced in the late imperial Qing and republicanperiods--roughly corresponding to the late nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries--and this despite the near eradication of beggingduring the Maoist era after 1949, when the state both alleviated theworst effects of poverty and suppressed begging as a potential source ofincome (Lu 2005, Schak 1988). The continuity of practices cannot simplybe ascribed to persistent economic relations or the stable transmissionof cultural knowledge. Rather, the form of begging practices, and theirstability, stem from the strategic exploitation of Chinese concepts andconcerns such as face (mianzi) and filiality (xiao), as I will attemptto show in the examples below. My aim is to place perceptions of begging within a larger contextof contemporary Chinese notions of moral behavior. I argue that whatmight appear on the surface as callousness towards the plight of beggarsis actually a response rooted in cultural assumptions about beggars ascheats and frauds, and the subsequent interpretation of their actions asa form of deception. I begin with a brief overview of the reforms inChina which have made poverty an issue once again after the relativeeconomic parity of the Maoist era, followed by an analysis of howforeign perceptions of begging have shaped Chinese responses andinterpretations to it. I then turn to an episode which occurred duringmy fieldwork involving a beggar and a foreign English teacher, andexamine the varying interpretations of Chinese and foreign participantsin the encounter. Finally, I attempt to place both of theseinterpretations in context to understand how the same encountergenerated wildly variant interpretations. The Return of Beggars to the Urban Landscape The very presence of beggars in China, let alone their conspicuousnumbers, marks a radical departure from the Maoist era. While beggingwas a familiar presence in Chinese urban areas in both the imperial andrepublican eras--an accepted, if not highly valued, profession--afterthe founding of the communist state This article is about a form of government in which the state operates under the control of a Communist Party. For information regarding communism as a form of society, as an ideology advocating that form of society, or as a popular movement, see the communism article. in 1949, beggars were largelyintegrated into the massive labor and agricultural reorganizationinitiated by the new government (Fernandez-Stembridge and Madsen 2002,Lu 1999). Begging disappeared, at least as a viable livelihood, for manyyears and only began to surface again during the Cultural Revolution(1966-1976), a time of massive social and political upheaval. Asagricultural production faltered, famine-stricken peasants travelled tourban areas to beg, often with the tacit support of local politicalleaders (Fernandez-Stembridge and Madsen 2002:214). During the period ofeconomic reforms in the 1980s, which saw the loosening of governmentcontrol over the planned economy planned economyn → econom��a planificadaplanned economyn → ��conomie planifi��eplanned economyn → and the development of privateenterprise, begging became once again both highly visible and sociallyproblematic. Although the reforms have been the catalyst for the massive growththat has propelled China to the status of a world economic power, theyhave been a mixed blessing for Shenyang and for many other peripheralregions. A sprawling city of nearly seven million people in China'snortheastern Manchurian region, Shenyang was once the capital of theManchu dynasty which conquered China in the seventeenth century. Todayit is a center for steel production and heavy industry. The economicreforms brought with them a shift from heavy to light industrialproduction which led to the closure of many factories in the area.Workers who have been laid off---called "step-down" (xiagang)workers--receive a small pension but have little opportunity for findingnew employment (Hung and Chiu 2003). Government statistics show theofficial unemployment rate for the region rising from 2.2% in 1990, to6.5% in 2004 (National Bureau of Statistics 2005:178) although, as Khanand Riskin (2001:153) point out, actual rates of unemployment in Chinaare estimated to be far higher than government statistics mightindicate. It is difficult to determine exactly how many people engage inbegging in modern Shenyang, or how much money they earn from thesepractices. In his study of a begging community in Taiwan, for instance,Schak (1988) notes that begging was not simply an individual pursuit,but involved the coordinated efforts of entire households to bring inmoney through a variety of practices. Begging was often combined withother forms of devalued de��val��ue? also de��val��u��atev. de��val��ued also de��valu��at��ed, de��val��u��ing also de��val��u��at��ing, de��val��ues also de��val��u��atesv.tr.1. To lessen or cancel the value of. labor, including peddling small items, manuallabor, seasonal construction work and petty crime, and by providingservices such as mourning or fortune telling. Begging also shaded intoother types of activities, with monks seeking alms or publicentertainers engaging in practices that are similar to begging.Analyzing the current situation in Shenyang, Chen (2006:134) enumeratesfour groups of people who are the source of the urban beggingpopulation: poor farmers, migrant laborers, the disabled, and criminals.The wide array of groups involved and varying practices makes estimatesof the number of beggars difficult to construct and verify. As a product of the reform era, begging is linked to wider socialand economic changes in China. Although government policies in thepostMao era have greatly raised the standard of living in both urban andrural areas, bringing, according to according toprep.1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.2. In keeping with: according to instructions.3. the World Bank (1992:23), onehundred million people out of absolute poverty in the 1980s, inequalitybetween urban and rural, coastal and interior, and industrial andagricultural areas has increased (Khan and Riskin 2001, 2005). Manybeggars are migrants from rural areas who find that they can earn asignificantly higher income begging in the city than farming in thecountryside. In a study of a "begging village" in Gansuprovince, where 30% of the population had migrated to beg in the cities,Hongxu Liu (2008) found that a single individual could earn 6000 yuan(or $875) annually by begging, about twice the average income for arural household. Once in the cities, however, rural migrants areseverely limited in terms of their employment opportunities by thehousehold registration (hukou) system, which restricts the provision ofgovernment services to those households which are registered in theirarea. As a result, rural migrants to urban areas have trouble findinghousing, schooling for their children, and healthcare, lack legalprotection and may face harassment from public security officials (thanand Zhang 1999, Wang 2004, Zhang 2002). Beggars are mingled in with alarger "floating population" (liudong renkou) of othermigrants who are all forced to seek out a living in the city withoutmany of the benefits of household registration. The Critique of Confucian Morality: Beggars and the Foreign Gaze For European outsiders who traveled to or lived in China in thenineteenth and early twentieth century, begging was linked to an overallcritique of Confucian morality. To their minds, little was done toeither rescue beggars from their terrible fate or to alleviate poverty.(4) Many travel and missionary accounts from the pre-Maoist era evince e��vince?tr.v. e��vinced, e��vinc��ing, e��vinc��esTo show or demonstrate clearly; manifest: evince distaste by grimacing. arighteous level of disgust at how the Chinese state organized welfareand charity (Smith 2001, Gee 1925, Bennet 1931; see also Schak 1988 foran overview of the historical literature). Official practices largelyserved to incorporate beggars into the governing apparatus of the state(by organizing them into gangs whose leaders answered to localmagistrates) rather than to ameliorate the conditions under which theylived (Lu 2005:5-8; Schak 1988:20). Chinese citizens, in turn, while attimes generous with beggars, were more often likely to step around, oreven over, the beggar's prostrate pros��trate?tr.v. pros��trat��ed, pros��trat��ing, pros��trates1. To put or throw flat with the face down, as in submission or adoration: form, reluctant to glance down oracknowledge the human suffering at their feet. These responses were theresult, the foreigners posited, of a system of ethics which wasrelational in orientation rather than universal (Smith 2001:186-216). From a Western liberal humanist perspective, begging thus oftenbecame the focus of an overall indictment of Confucian morality,exemplified by what we might term the lack of regard for beggars asstrangers. Beggars were ignored, in this sense, not because they werepitiable pit��i��a��ble?adj.1. Arousing or deserving of pity or compassion; lamentable.2. Arousing disdainful pity. See Synonyms at pathetic.pit or dirty people, but because they were pitiable or dirtystrangers. An early missionary in Shenyang, while noting that Chinesewere very generous with friends and relatives, also lamented the factthat most Chinese would ignore a stranger and not take the time to helpa person they did not know: A man is taken suddenly ill when walking alone along a busy citystreet. He staggers staggers/stag��gers/ (stag��erz) a form of vertigo occurring in decompression sickness. staggersincoordination of any kind, including a tendency to fall, and recumbency if harassed. and falls near the door of an evidently prosperousshop. What happens? Passers-by glance at him curiously and go on; a fewstand and look at him, but no one touches him or meddles in any way; theshopkeeper keeps studiously stu��di��ous?adj.1. a. Given to diligent study: a quiet, studious child.b. Conducive to study.2. out of sight. He is unconscious and astranger, so no one can inform his friends, but after a time theshopkeeper gives notice to the yamen ya��men?n.The office or residence of an official in the Chinese Empire.[Chinese (Mandarin) y��men : y��, magistracy (from y��, [magistrate's office] whichhas charge of city affairs, and he is removed. All this time no one hasso much as brought him a cup of water, or tried to make him morecomfortable. (Christie 1914:53) These valuations of Chinese moral behavior have continued into thepresent, when foreigners in China--no longer just missionaries, butEnglish teachers English Teachers (airing internationally as Taipei Diaries) is a Canadian documentary television series. The series, which airs on Canada's Life Network and internationally, profiles several young Canadians teaching English as a Second Language in Taipei, Taiwan. and business owners as well--frequently note theduality of Chinese ethics, a focus on members of kin and social networksaccompanied by a lack of regard for those outside them. Compare themissionary account above with Peter Hessler's memoir of teachingEnglish in Sichuan during the 1990s: The average citizen seemed to react to a person in trouble bythinking: That is not my brother, or my friend, or anybody I know, andit is interesting to watch him suffer. When there were serious caraccidents, people would rush over, shouting eagerly as they ran,"Sile meiyou? Sile meiyou?"--Is anybody dead? Is anybody dead?(Hessler 2001:112) Here, the logic of spectacle--of wanting to see the body of theaccident victim--parallels the deliberate indifference towards thebeggar: those to whom I am not related are but objects of my pity oramusement, not kin I am indebted to help. Hessler makes the argumentthat such actions stem from the collective nature of Chinese culturalnorms, and that "collectivism collectivismAny of several types of social organization that ascribe central importance to the groups to which individuals belong (e.g., state, nation, ethnic group, or social class). It may be contrasted with individualism. was limited to small groups, tofamilies and close friends and danwei, or work units, and these tightcircles also acted as boundaries: they were exclusive as well asinclusive, and the average Fuling resident appeared to feel littleidentification with people outside his well-known groups". We mightbe tempted to think of this evaluation as simply the imposition of aforeigner's cultural bias on Chinese patterns of behavior, but itis also in many ways an element of the conventional Chinese orthodoxy ofdifference--we Chinese are socially cohesive, you foreigners areindividualistic--and was an active construction of Hessler'sstudents. As I will show below, this presumption of difference informs theinterpretation of begging in Shenyang--the idea that foreigners andChinese react to beggars in fundamentally different ways because oftheir varying cultural backgrounds. As Tu Wei-ming has noted, the lackof a universalist morality which would, in theory, extend equaltreatment by individuals to all others is often positioned in China asone of the most significant differences between Confucian and Christiandoctrines. "Confucian salvation, as it were, takes the basic dyadic Two. Refers to two components being used. (programming) dyadic - binary (describing an operator).Compare monadic. relationships in the family as its point of departure," while theuniversal application of ethical action is burdened by the possibledevaluation devaluation,decreasing the value of one nation's currency relative to gold or the currencies of other nations. It is usually undertaken as a means of correcting a deficit in the balance of payments. of family relationships (Tu 1985:123). Tu outlines thethinking of Mencius, the most prominent ancient interpreter of Confucianphilosophy, as follows: If we reduce the richness, including the fruitful ambiguities, of the father-son relationship to the one-dimensional encounters we normally have with people on the street, our good intention of caring for strangers as dearly as we care for our parents may result in treating our dear ones as indifferently as we treat strangers. The insistence that we begin our tasks of self-realization in the context of the immediate dyadic relationships in which we are inevitably circumscribed is a basic principle underlying the father-son relationship in Confucian symbolism. (123-124) Ignoring a beggar both recognizes and reinforces an ideology ofdifference, where Chinese can position themselves as distinctly andirreducibly Confucian in the face of the foreigner's gaze--acounterpoint to the foreigner's presumably pre��sum��a��ble?adj.That can be presumed or taken for granted; reasonable as a supposition: presumable causes of the disaster. universalist Kantianethics. The Encounter Between John and Xiaoping This ideology of difference in regards to begging played out in thesummer of 2005 in an encounter between John, a white South AfricanEnglish teacher, and an urban beggar named Xiaoping. (5) John wascycling on his way to work one afternoon at a private English language English language,member of the West Germanic group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Germanic languages). Spoken by about 470 million people throughout the world, English is the official language of about 45 nations. training center in Shenyang. His school was located in a busy downtownshopping district, with a great deal of foot traffic and more than a fewbeggars. One beggar, who had taken up a place outside his school'sentrance, was Xiaoping, a 12 year-old girl with two club feet and openwounds on her arms and legs. According to a pamphlet published by thecharity which later took up her case: "She sat on a skateboard-likedevice, her hands extended to passersby. And many did pass by her. But[John], as he drove past her, noticed that she had open wounds all overher feet, legs, hands and arms. They looked so raw and infected that hewas touched with compassion for her and decided to help her to getcleaned up at a hospital" (SHIC SHIC Self-Help Information Centre (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada)1996:3). As John was talking to Noun 1. talking to - a lengthy rebuke; "a good lecture was my father's idea of discipline"; "the teacher gave him a talking to"lecture, speechrebuke, reprehension, reprimand, reproof, reproval - an act or expression of criticism and censure; "he had to Xiaoping, a crowd of people began to gather,some of whom included his own English students who were arriving forclass. Several tried to intervene. According to John "people weretelling me, 'No, don't help her, it's not yourbusiness' and 'There's many people like this.'"John told me that he was disgusted by the "apathy" of thecrowd, a quality he attributed to ordinary people in both Shenyang andaround the world: "But it's not only Chinese people, it'sAmericans as well and South Africans This is a list of notable South Africans with Wikipedia articles. Academics, Medical and ScientistsWouter Basson, Scientist Mariam Seedat, sociologist and gender advocate (1970 - ) Estian Calitz, academic (1949 - ) and everybody ... it's justapathy." As more and more people told him there was nothing hecould do, he claimed to become even more certain that he should takesome form of action. John went into the school to ask someone to call the hospital, butthe Chinese staff of the school refused to get involved and asked him todrop the matter. Meanwhile, his students who had followed him inside,attempted to dissuade him from doing anything. I have excerpted severalportions of our interview below: And the whole time, some of the students are telling me, 'It's not real, it's not real.' Some of the students say, 'These children, they are working for gangs.' What does it matter if these children are working for gangs, they're being exploited you know? And some of them are telling me it was dangerous, that gangs can do something to me and ... I might save this girl, but I cannot save the other children that's working for the gang.... Some of them, when we got in the street, tell me, '[John], it's fake blood. It's makeup.' And I grab them and I push them to the girl, I pushed them down, and I said, 'Look at that,' because ... they only glanced. They glanced for a second. It's too horrible for them to look at, so they glance for a second and then they go with their preconceived ideas of this, like ... of avoiding responsibility or something like that.... And [then] I heard the crowd gasp, and I turned around and this girl had to take a leak. Now the skateboard was about this big [a foot wide] and had a big round hole in it, and she just pulls her pants down a little bit and she can pee through the hole. But she opens her back, her lower back and her buttocks to do that and she had a massive thirteen-centimeter bedsore ... deep, deep, deep it was deep to the bone ... and it was rotting. Rotting. It was black and rotting. She must have been smelling herself, you know? It was rotting away.... I turned around and the crowd gasped and then I realized, well fuck, l'd better get her to a hospital. John persisted until the police arrived, and then through atranslator (one of his students) he convinced them to take him and thegirl to the hospital. He was reluctant to leave her alone because hesuspected that the hospital staff would simply discharge her as soon asthey could, or that the gang his students had mentioned would come andclaim her again. His concerns were not without merit. According to Xiaoping, severalmonths before, an elderly Chinese woman had tried to get her treated bya doctor as well, but her "big brothers" (dage) arrived at thehospital at mid night and took her away. They beat her for leaving thestreet and letting the woman take her to the hospital (SHIC 2006:5). Asmore information became available, and some Chinese media outletsinvestigated the story, because of the spectacle of a foreigner helpinga Chinese beggar, it became clear that Xiaoping's big brothers wereactually members of a begging ring that used handicapped children fromthe countryside as beggars in the city, taking whatever money thechildren earned for themselves. (6) They had approached Xiaoping'sfoster father, a rural farmer from a neighboring province, with an offerthat they would give his disabled foster daughter a job in a toy factoryin the city. Once they brought her to Shenyang they put her to work as abeggar. "[Xiaoping] said those men put things in her wounds, likeacid and other dirty things that made them even worse ... They requiredher to make a certain amount of money each day by begging otherwise theywould not give her food and they would treat her badly" (9). John spent the night in the hospital and eventually managed toarrange for the treatment of her most serious wounds. Word spreadquickly through the foreign English-teaching community, and Johnarranged for several of his friends to stay in shifts with Xiaoping atthe hospital. He also tried to raise funds for Xiaoping's treatmentby setting up a collection box at his English school English schoolDominant school in painting in England from the 18th century to c. 1850. From 1730 to 1750 two distinctive British forms of painting were perfected by William Hogarth: genre scenes depicting the “modern moral subject,” and the small-scale , and organizing afund-raising event at a local bar. In total, John and other foreignEnglish teachers raised over 12,000 yuan (about $1500) forXiaoping's continued treatment and care. A doctor at the hospitalalso suggested contacting SHIC (Serving Humanity in Crisis), acharitable organization This article is about charitable organizations. For other uses of the word charity, see Charity. A charitable organization (also known as a charity) is an organization with charitable purposes only. which was able to provide more funds and tookover the administration of Xiaoping's case. After two correctivesurgeries and a course of physical therapy, Xiaoping's feet werestraightened. She is now able to walk with only some difficulty andbegan elementary school elementary school:see school. in 2007. (7) How does one attempt to interpret or evaluate the actions andviewpoints of various parties to this episode? We might, for instance,view John's interpretation of events (that he had to do something,that nobody else would do anything, that even when forced to look hisChinese students refused to admit the truth) within a long history ofencounter between domestic and foreign ethical frameworks in China. Likethe missionaries of old, he interpreted the actions and words of thecrowd which opposed his efforts to do something as a moral indictment ofthe Chinese character, although John was also careful to frame thiswithin a general moral shortcoming throughout the world. In ourinterview, though, he emphasized to me at one point, "This you haveto put in, because this is the favorite Chinese saying for avoidingresponsibility: 'There's many people like this in ourcountry.'" Several of the students at the English school where John taughttook a negative view of his actions. One woman in her early 20s wasupset when John brought the collection box into the school, and laughedas she described how it sat empty at the reception desk because everyoneat the school knew that none of the money would end up helping the girlbut would instead go to the criminals who had organized the beggingring. At this point, her friend, another woman of the same age, brokeinto the conversation: "This pisses me off! This is a socialproblem, a complicated social problem. How does one person think he cansolve it?" She later explained to me further (this time switchinginto English) (8) that what she meant was attacking the problem onebeggar at a time would not lead to any long-lasting solution. "Thisis China's problem. Maybe foreigners, they want to be like heroesand save everyone. But really they save no one. They just, oh, give thisperson money, and it's okay?" A Chinese man in his late 30s whom I regularly talked to about hisEnglish school knew some of the students who had witnessed the event."It's not so good what this man did. I don't trustbeggars. They always cheat people. Now that they know foreigners arelike this, they will take advantage of them." In fact, the ideathat beggars cheat, by either exaggerating their maladies andmisfortunes, or by actually, as John noted, using fake blood and makeup,was a common concern. (9) Many people were convinced that the beggarswith twisted limbs were actually trained acrobats who found that theycould make more money begging. At the end of the day, I was told, theywould straighten their arms and legs, walk back to their expensive BMW BMWin full Bayerische Motoren Werke AGGerman automaker. Founded as an aircraft engine manufacturer in 1916, the company assumed the name Bayerische Motoren Werke and became known for its high-speed motorcycles in the 1920s. automobiles and drive home to their luxury apartments. While, as was noted above, beggars are capable of earning acomfortable living, especially in comparison to life as a farmer, itseems unlikely that individual beggars would be able to earn enough tosustain the luxuries some people attributed to them. I prefer to thinkof this as a fantasy which undermines the ethical claim of the beggar tothe urban resident's money. Imagining the beggar as secretlypossessing all the markers of wealth and status in the new Chinajustifies a moral disregard for the' beggar's plight. This isa powerful narrative, which makes the beggar in the China thequintessential persona non grata non gra��ta?adj.Not welcome; not approved: The aide, having been declared non grata, was expelled from the country.[From persona non grata.] , an unwelcome presence, and most of myChinese informants encouraged me, when walking near beggars or whenbeing approached by them, to look away, to ignore them, and to keepwalking as if they did not exist there, right in front of me, blockingmy way. Uncontested, this narrative might easily convince urbanresidents to leave beggars to themselves. In the next section of thisarticle, I examine in more detail the structure of the beggar'sclaim on the potential giver and the culturally specific form of Chinesebegging. Beggars assert their own narratives about their practicethrough the stories they tell to donors, attempting to justify theiractions through appeals to traditional Chinese values, which forms aninteresting counterpoint to the idea of the beggar as an affluent cheator hustler. The Practice of Begging Beggars in Shenyang stimulate the pity of givers through a host ofrelated strategies that coalesce around exploiting facets of Chinesecultural experience. Certain begging practices "made sense" inShenyang, both to the beggars and to potential donors; they appealed tocompassion as informed by, and constructed through, dominant culturalideologies. In the United States United States,officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. , a man holding a sign by the side ofthe road reading "Will work for food" appeals to an ideologyof affluence and security through concerted and directed labor--thesense that my wealth was built by me and not by the alienated productionof others, and the beggar is here reaffirming that ideology by merelyasking for the same opportunity. Brackette Williams describes how someNew York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of subway beggars "read us reading the U.S. American Creed:nothing for nothing and God helps those who help themselves"(1994:28). Their strategies draw upon this ethic by providing tokencompensation for donations, or by performing minor public services Public services is a term usually used to mean services provided by government to its citizens, either directly (through the public sector) or by financing private provision of services. suchas announcing subway stops. Such begging practices are deeply entwinedwith cultural biases and assumptions that determine the success orfailure of particular strategies. In a study of begging among Anandapuram lepers begging in Mumbai,James Staples (2003) elucidates what might be considered an Indiancultural logic of begging. "Their enactments evoked both aworshipper's conventionalized act of submission before the divine(touching the brow, for example), and the conventionalized posturesappropriate to those displaying deference to the authority of elders andlordly lord��ly?adj. lord��li��er, lord��li��est1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of a lord.2. Very dignified and noble: a lordly and charitable enterprise.3. superiors, as in the touching of the feet of actual or potentialalms-givers" (302-303). The strategies he describes bear manyresemblances to Chinese practices; for instance, the display of woundsand deformities, and the performance of obeisances. As he notes,however, "the meaning and practical effects of deformities areoften contextually defined" (301). Disfigured hands grantedlegitimacy and force to the Indian beggar's claims, while adeformity DeformitySee also Lameness.Calmady, Sir Richardborn without lower legs. [Br. Lit.: Sir Richard Calmady, Walsh Modern, 84]Carey, Philipembittered young man with club foot seeks fulfillment. [Br. Lit. of the face was stigmatizing in so far as it suggested a moralor divine cause for the disfigurement dis��fig��ure?tr.v. dis��fig��ured, dis��fig��ur��ing, dis��fig��uresTo mar or spoil the appearance or shape of; deform.[Middle English disfiguren, from Old French desfigurer . For all of a certain similarityof form, the meaning of begging practices is quite specific to thecultural context in which they are found. The script and rules of play for begging thus varycross-culturally, making certain strategies prominent and efficacious inChina. The most common strategies I observed in Shenyang might beallocated to four categories: strategies that violate norms of face andpublic reserve, strategies that assert bonds of kinship with donors tooverride the lack of social ties and stimulate compassion, strategiesthat involve public humiliation Public humiliation was often used by local communities to punish minor and petty criminals before the age of large, modern prisons (imprisonment was long unusual as a punishment, rather a method of coercion). of the donor, and strategies that playupon the significance of the rural peasant in the Chinese nationalimagination. In terms of the first, many Chinese were awed by the lengthsbeggars would go to in soliciting the sympathy of donors, engaging inpractices that they would themselves consider embarrassing, demeaning,and injurious in��ju��ri��ous?adj.1. Causing or tending to cause injury; harmful: eating habits that are injurious to one's health.2. to a sense of face and pride. Face (mianzl) is the socialrepresentation of a person's prestige and character, and as such isthought to be completely absent in beggars who demean de��mean?1?tr.v. de��meaned, de��mean��ing, de��meansTo conduct or behave (oneself) in a particular manner: demeaned themselves well in class. themselves by theact of begging for money; therefore the idea that one would even engagein begging was considered by some as evidence enough of thebeggar's desperation. While riding in a taxi with one of myinformants, as we watched several old beggars knock on Noun 1. knock on - (rugby) knocking the ball forward while trying to catch it (a foul)rugby, rugby football, rugger - a form of football played with an oval ballrugby, rugby football, rugger - a form of football played with an oval ball car windows at abusy intersection's stoplight, she told me (in English), "Howdo they do that? [If] I have no money, I would rather die than do thisall day." I asked if it was because she thought the work was hard,or too dangerous (the cars sometimes coming perilously close to runningdown a tottering old beggar). "No! Just people see me like this, Iwant to die." There were other means of defying the conventions of face as well.In a place where illness and bodily deformity are a source of profounddiscomfort (Kohrman 2005), beggars usually bring attention to theirwounds and deformities by putting them on display. A clubbed foot or aparalyzed leg is left uncovered, even in the cold of winter. Anamputated or missing limb is revealed, not by an empty sleeve or pant pantv.To breathe rapidly and shallowly. leg, but by the stump brought into the open, often wrapped in bloodiedbandages to enhance the effect. The wounds on display both fascinate andrepel. The beggar not only forces the donor to recognize the wound, butmakes the wound visceral. Each pedestrian, walking past thebeggar's form, feels a momentary twinge twingen.A sharp, sudden physical pain.v.To cause to feel a sharp pain. of identification; theyfeel the pain as the beggar must feel it, establishing a connectionbetween the two of them. Bearing and locomotion locomotionAny of various animal movements that result in progression from one place to another. Locomotion is classified as either appendicular (accomplished by special appendages) or axial (achieved by changing the body shape). add to the pathos and the visualrepresentation of the beggars' obeisance, spatially configuringtheir relative status to the donor. They hunch themselves over andshuffle when they walk. Beggars must eschew whatever comfort their coinsmight buy for them, such as new shoes or clothing; even a bath has toappear to be beyond their means. If they were to use the gains of theirbegging in this way, it would undermine the continued flow of money intotheir bowl. A beggar has to appear to maintain a perpetual state ofmisery and poverty to be successful. Words are rarely exchanged between beggars and donors, other than abrief thanks. When I tried to speak to beggars, words seemedmeaningless. Language failed. They would wail to me, cry, strike theirhead or limbs against the ground, but in all ways eschew verbalcommunication. When I asked one old woman a question in Chinese, shesimply began repeating again and again, "1 do not understand whatyou are saying, I do not understand." Yet despite the failure of communication, some beggars do indeedhave stories. The second set of strategies I describe here rely onappeals to common values in order to arouse compassion. On one ofShenyang's main shopping streets, a group of four men wouldregularly set up a large information center, complete with full-colorposters in front of them on boards. The posters explained that they arethe parents of children sick in one of the city hospitals with leukemia,and described the symptoms of the disease to the public and the courseof treatment. The posters also explained that the families of thesechildren were from the countryside and could not afford treatment fortheir children, and so they were seeking donations. A large red woodenbox was set in front of the line of fathers with a slot in the top forpeople to deposit money. Every time someone approached and dropped in afew coins or a bill, the line of men would intone in��tone?v. in��toned, in��ton��ing, in��tonesv.tr.1. To recite in a singing tone.2. To utter in a monotone.v.intr.1. , "Thank you foryour kind heart" (xiexie ni de aixin) and bow as one. On anothershopping street, a similar story was told, but with a slight bite ofhatred. A man stood beside a portable stand he had set up with a largeboard featuring pictures of a young girl playing, dancing, and thenshots of her in the hospital. On the ground in front of him his storywas written in chalk: his daughter had been diagnosed with a liverproblem, and he took her to the clinic near his village, but the doctorwas a drunken incompetent and only injured her more seriously. Hebrought her to the city hospital for an expensive treatment which hecannot afford. However, his sign stated that he was not only asking formoney to help with the treatment, but for the government or the media toexpose the problems in rural health care. Another beggar I met, a man in his mid-30s, with long unkempt hairand a club foot extended on a spindly spin��dly?adj. spin��dli��er, spin��dli��estSlender and elongated, especially in a way that suggests weakness.spindlyAdjective[-dlier, -dliest leg in front of him, would sit onthe asphalt in front of a large market and write out a Buddhist prayerin chalk. It would extend in four character sets down the road forseveral feet, and when he had finished writing it, he would settlehimself down with his battered metal bowl in front of him waiting [ormoney. The poem, repeated every day, read: Amitofu [the name of the Amitabha Buddha in Chinese] Uncles, Aunts, Brothers and Sisters. Have mercy and extend your loving hand. 6ire a single penny to help a cripple. Consideration and virtue gushing forth like a spring. The kindness of decent people is never forgotten. In life until death remembered in the heart. May your entire family go in peace. All things as you wish them, luck and good fortune. Humanity everywhere possessing genuine feelings. While walking on the street have a look. Thank you blessed friends for your assistance. All of these beggars appealed to donors through the logic ofConfucian (and in the final case Buddhist) obligation. (10) The men withthe poster could claim that they were not simply begging, but were doingwhat was expected of a parent who could not afford to care for a sickchild. Some able-bodied beggars accompanied a blind or crippled parentas a means to solicit sympathy from donors at the hardships they enduredas responsible children. (11) These beggars framed their needs in thelanguage of filiality and kinship. Similarly, the beggar with the chalkpoem addresses his audience as kin, and in doing so invokes their ownobligations to care for him. The same language of obligation, forinstance, informs criminal confessions broadcast on the local televisionstation. The shackled and defeated criminals frequently cite thefinancial responsibilities they have to their families as the cause, ifnot precisely the justification, for their actions. These begging strategies were intimately tied to appeals ofconscience. By couching their claims within matters of circumstance,rather than choice, beggars forced people to consider the contingency oftheir own relative prosperity and the possibility that if somemisfortune were to befall be��fall?v. be��fell , be��fall��en , be��fall��ing, be��fallsv.intr.To come to pass; happen.v.tr.To happen to. See Synonyms at happen. them--if they were to become lame, or need tocare for a sick child--they too might be forced to beg. But there is acoercive element to this claim as well, in that beggars demand thisrecognition from their potential donors. In his ethnography of aTaiwanese begging community, Schak (1988:46) describes the concept ofkho-lian-iu: or the "image of pitifulness," the means by whichbeggars inspire the charity of others. The image, meant to maximize thesympathy of others, was often carefully devised and, if necessary,faked. Women would borrow children from their neighbors so that theycould beg as single mothers caring for a host of dependents. Beggarsintentionally matted their hair, dirtied their faces and tried to demeanthemselves in front of potential givers in order to increase thepotential size of donations. Strategies in the third group are more overt and confrontational.Very rarely were these violent; instead, they relied on creating a senseof embarrassment or spectacle that maneuvered donors into the socialequivalent of a checkmate checkmateend of game in chess: folk-etymology of Shah-mat, ‘the Shah is dead.’ [Br. Folklore: Espy, 217]See : End . I once observed an encounter between awell-dressed middle-aged man and a young dirty street girl. The girl wasabout six years old, with stained and patched clothes, matted hair and adirty face. As the man strode along the street in his sharp dress pantsand new golf shirt, the girl skipped along with him, dogging his stepsand keeping a battered tin bowl firmly centered in front of him. The manused his arm to brush her aside, and when she hopped back in front ofhim he shouted, "Out of the way!" (gunkai). When it becameevident to her that he was not going to hand her any money, the girlsuddenly knelt down and grabbed on to his leg. The man tried to shakeher off, but she squeezed even harder, her face pressed into histrousers. She screamed First single released by Ultra Vivid Scene She Screamed - 2-24 Walkin' After Midnight - 2:58 Not in Love (Hit By a Truck)(Dedicated to Hank Williams and the Marquis de Sade) - 2:38 The 12" version included You Know it All - 3:06 . Other people stopped to watch. A crowd began togather. No one attempted to intervene or help either of the parties, andas the man berated the child loudly and tried to wrench her fingersapart, tears began to streak down her face. He finally pulled a smallbill from his pocket and put it in her hands. The girl let go and ranover to an equally dirty woman squatting nearby and handed the money toher. To become the center of such a spectacle is deeply uncomfortable tomost Chinese because there are no face-saving ways out of the situationother than giving money. Hitting the child, shouting, making a scene, orrunning away would all be sources of embarrassment--better simply tosacrifice some cash and leave with dignity. Finally, beggars juxtapose jux��ta��pose?tr.v. jux��ta��posed, jux��ta��pos��ing, jux��ta��pos��esTo place side by side, especially for comparison or contrast. their rural origins (even where thosetoo might be faked) with the urban resident's cosmopolitansophistication so��phis��ti��cate?v. so��phis��ti��cat��ed, so��phis��ti��cat��ing, so��phis��ti��catesv.tr.1. To cause to become less natural, especially to make less naive and more worldly.2. . Beggars' clothing is nearly always marked as ruraland traditional: padded, layered, and bulky, even in summer. Theytypically wear traditional cloth shoes. If they speak, it is in therural dialect and with a distinctly non-urban accent; if they have astory to tell, it almost invariably in��var��i��a��ble?adj.Not changing or subject to change; constant.in��vari��a��bil identifies them as migrants fromrural areas. At bus and train stations, I frequently encountered youngcouples bundled in thick clothes, their hands and faces reddened andsmudged with dirt. The mother would carry a sleeping toddler, his inertarms and legs dangling from her grasp, bundled against the wind or cold.The man would approach, holding his hands in front of him. "We arefrom the village, we came here just a few days ago. Our money wasstolen, we can't afford a ticket back to the village. We havenowhere to stay, we are living on the street. I don't have any foodfor my child ..." Many of my informants confirmed that they hadbeen approached in similar ways, and this technique was even the subjectof a news expose on a local television station which used a hiddencamera to film such beggars buying designer clothing. (12) For beggars to cast themselves as rural migrants in this sort ofurban drama, trapped in the city against their will or because of theirinfirmities, is not an anomaly of narrative geography. It is difficultto overstate the importance of the countryside in the Chinese nationalimagination. The Maoist state often staked its legitimacy on itsidentification with, and support from, the peasantry. Mao himself, as aconsequence of his Report on an Investigation into the Peasant Movementin Hunan (1967), has often been credited with shifting the focus ofcommunist struggle from factories to farm fields, and as a result, thecommunist revolution A communist revolution is a proletarian revolution inspired by the ideas of Marxism that aims to replace capitalism with communism, typically with socialism (state-run means of production) as an intermediate stage. in China proceeded from rural to urban areas. It isno accident then that those who were associated with the capitalistexploitative classes after the communist victory in 1949--"the evilgentry and the lawless landlords" (25)--were often reformed throughlabor in the countryside. Even the greatest crisis of state legitimacy,the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, was addressed by shiftinglarge numbers of urban youth to rural and agricultural work-teams(MacFarquhar and Schoenhals 2006). Very few people are more than ageneration removed from the countryside; they are linked to it by way oforigin or through extended periods of labor. Even today, schoolchildrenare periodically sent to the countryside for "learn from thefarmer" events. But the dominant forces of Chinese modernity, deriving from thesources of capital rather than the essence of socialism, spring todayfrom the cities. This shift in the geographic basis of social legitimacyhas been accompanied by a new form of human classification definedthrough the metric of "quality" (suzhi) (Anagnost 2004, Kipnis2006). Suzhi is a measure of manners, bearing and proper socialbehavior In biology, psychology and sociology social behavior is behavior directed towards, or taking place between, members of the same species. Behavior such as predation which involves members of different species is not social. , and an index of origin, with rural migrants classed as"low" quality and urban residents as "high." Just asBourdieu demonstrates, in the case of French art consumption, that thedevelopment of taste is a product of socialization socialization/so��cial��iza��tion/ (so?shal-i-za��shun) the process by which society integrates the individual and the individual learns to behave in socially acceptable ways. so��cial��i��za��tionn. , the discourse ofsuzhi in China fulfils "a social function of legitimating socialdifferences" (1984:7) which automatically classes people by dress,speech, habit, and physical appearance. Possessing the lowest level ofquality, an attribute marked by their vocation, their clothing, andtheir speech, the condition of beggars is self-fulfilling for the vastmajority of urban residents, who can also assert that their own goodfortune is a result of their own individual quality. Yet beggars appearto take on the burden of low quality willingly, to accept thedenigration den��i��grate?tr.v. den��i��grat��ed, den��i��grat��ing, den��i��grates1. To attack the character or reputation of; speak ill of; defame.2. of their suzhi even as other, upwardly mobile migrants,strive to alter their dress and demeanor to suit urban tastes. Bydressing and acting as rural peasants, beggars deliberately invoke theregional basis of authenticity of the socialist past and thus alsoreinforce the psychic anxiety that arises within the modern: the sensethat, for the urban resident, the past has been successfullytranscended, only to find its negation, in the form of the beggar,staring one in the face. Giving money in a sense stitches that fantasyback together and allows the pedestrian to continue on his or her way. The coercive nature of begging, of being forced to identify andempathize em��pa��thizev.To feel empathy in relation to another person. with beggars and their plight, was greatly disturbing to manyof my Chinese informants. By turning away and not looking, it was almostas if, by not seeing, the beggar's claim could be annulled.Beggars, in turn, used the strategies outlined above to make theirpresence known, to force the pedestrian to recognize them and theparticular condition of their humanity. The performative aspect ofbegging is the conflict between these competing interpretations andtheir eventual resolution in either the giving of alms or in thepedestrian walking resolutely past. Cheating and Deception In China, the social discomfort of begging comes about throughother sorts of public encounters as well, encounters which, once again,involve the imposition of someone's agency over another. As Istated above, many people in Shenyang are concerned that beggars cheat,that they fake their wounds, conditions, and stories to provide afinancially secure living for themselves, inconsistent with theirterrifying appearance. But the feeling of deception was not simply anexcuse not to give money to beggars; being cheated was a constantconcern and threat to face, pride, and prosperity. During my time inShenyang, I was continuously being warned by my informants about theways I might be cheated, about how to protect myself from pickpockets,and other strategies meant to protect the guileless foreigner from beingtaken advantage of. A person who cheats another can be called a pianzi(cheater) or by some variation of the word tuor, which is a slang wordfor a scam artist or hustler. A pianzi is a regular cheat, someone whorigs a mahjong game or a deck of cards, someone who passes fakemerchandise off as authentic, or someone who overcharges you for shoddygoods (see Blum 2007). A tuor is more of a trickster trickster,a mythic figure common among Native North Americans, South Americans, and Africans. Usually male but occasionally female or disguised in female form, he is notorious for exaggerated biological drives and well-endowed physique; partly divine, partly human, , and the act ofdeception requires more skill. The term describes anyone who, usually incooperation with a business owner, acts as a customer or innocent tohelp sell that person's products. I was told to be careful ifanyone approached me in a clothing store claiming that I was exactly thesame size as her boyfriend, and requested that I try on some clothes.After modeling a few outfits for her, I was told, she would thank me formy help and leave with some of the clothes. The store owner would thenapproach me and ask me to pay for the clothes my "girlfriend"had just left with. But tuor could also be more specialized and participate in any of ahost of other common scams. For instance, there were marriage hustlers(huntuor) who worked with matchmaking MatchmakingMatricide (See MURDER.)Kecalmarriage broker whose plans are foiled by a pair of lovers. [Czech Opera: Smetana The Bartered Bride in Osborne Opera, 32]Levi, Dolly agencies" beautiful men orwomen who would be set up as potential mates with customers who wereconsidering using the agency's services. After the customer hadpaid his or her non-refundable fees, the huntuor would give an excusefor ending the relationship and the customer would have to choose amongother legitimate, but perhaps less attractive, clients. A bar hustler(batuor), usually a beautiful woman, tries to attract men in publicplaces and then suggest meeting for a drink in one of her favoritecafes. After ordering an assortment of drinks and snacks, her phonerings and to get better reception she goes outside; after which, ofcourse, she simply leaves, and the poor man finds himself stuck with asizable bill (the menu, of course, not printing the set of outrageousprices) and a well-muscled server waiting to be paid. The cafe thensplits the proceeds with the batuor. None of these scenarios actuallyhappened to me, or to any of my informants, but were told with the heavyring of truth as cautionary tales by multiple people. Despite displayingall the marks of urban legends (although some of the scenarios werederived from sensationalistic sen��sa��tion��al��ism?n.1. a. The use of sensational matter or methods, especially in writing, journalism, or politics.b. Sensational subject matter.c. Interest in or the effect of such subject matter. media reports) these tales were used asobject lessons in informing me how not to be cheated. Many Chinese lump beggars in with tuor and pianzi, arguing that allof them cheat people. This was especially the case with beggar children,whom I was told to avoid as they were actually thieves. One femaleinformant told me that the moment she realized her cellphone (CELLular telePHONE) The first ubiquitous wireless telephone. Originally analog, all new cellular systems are digital, which has enabled the cellphone to turn into a smartphone that has access to the Internet. had beenstolen while she was outside shopping, she looked around for childbeggars who might have taken it. This Dickensian stereotype of the childthief, which resonates with the common Chinese word for pickpocket PICKPOCKET. A thief; one who in a crowd or. in other places, steals from the pockets or person of another without putting him in fear. This is generally punished as simple larceny. ,"little thief" (xiaotou), does carry some degree of truth.While lunching with an American, the loud and gregarious headmaster of alocal English school, one afternoon at a Xinjiang restaurant (servinghalal ha��lal? Islamn.Meat that has been slaughtered in the manner prescribed by the shari'a.adj.1. Of or being meat slaughtered in the prescribed way: a halal butcher; a halal label. food from China's westernmost province) a gaggle of childrenrushed through the entrance giggling and teasing each other. He calledout to them in English, "What'd you guys get today?" Oneof the children pulled some bills and a cellphone out of his pocketbefore he was herded into the back of the restaurant by the owner. Theheadmaster told me that the children were related to therestaurant's owner, and that he used to have problems with thembecause they would steal from customers outside his English school. Hehad managed to broker an agreement where they stayed away from hisschool, and now he ate at the restaurant quite regularly. The notion that beggars cheat is compounded by a concern for thefinancial status of otherwise able-bodied beggars; people are irked bythe idea that even a modest amount of money should enable beggars tobecome self-sufficient. "Why are they here everyday? Why do theyhave to beg? Even if they make ten yuan, they can take that and buy somebottles of water for one yuan each, and then sell them for two!"one of my informants said to me exasperated one day as he fended off abeggar. Bottled water can be purchased for one yuan a bottle in amarket, or iced tea and soda for two (fifteen and thirty cents,respectively). The standard price at a newsstand or from a vendor thoughis two yuan for water and three for an iced tea or soda. One disabledman did operate a small stand at a bus stop near my home sellingnewspapers and, in summer, cold drinks, making enough money for aliving. Many of Shenyang's poor also make money collecting emptyplastic drink bottles and taking them to the recycling station. For twoempty bottles, a person can receive three mao (about four cents). Menand women too old to take a job as a laborer often wander through busyshopping districts dragging a large nylon sack behind them filled withcrushed plastic bottles. They approach anyone with a drink and ask forthe bottle, or sometimes stop and rummage through garbage receptacles.This willingness to operate at the extremes of poverty and yet notresort to begging leaves many people with a lack of respect for thosewho do decide to hold out their hands. The popular television show Ma Dashuai (13) touched on theseemotions and the question of falsity and deception in begging. In theshow, the lead character Ma has also "just come from thevillage" and is, in truth this time, robbed of his money whileriding the bus into the city. With no money in his pocket, and havingalso lost the address of his only relative in the city, Ma is forced towander around during the day and sleep in the train station at night.While walking through the park one day, he sees a blind man playing anerhu--a Chinese stringed stringed?adj. Music1. Having strings. Often used in combination: a six-stringed lute.2. Produced by stringed instruments: stringed chamber music. instrument--with a hat placed in front of himcontaining a collection of coins. Ma squats in front of him, smiling,staring at his frail body and thick dark glasses. The old blind man sitsunaware, no expression on his face, his head cocked slightly to one sideand staring blankly at nothing, his hand merely sliding the bow back andforth over the erhu The erhu (Chinese: ; Pinyin: ��rh��), also called nanhu (, literally "southern fiddle"), and sometimes known in the West as the "Chinese violin" or "Chinese two-string fiddle," is a . Ma shuffles forward a step and squats down again,this time reaching up his hand and waving it in the blind man'sface. He gets no reaction. He moves forward another step, looks firstover one shoulder, and then the other, and slowly reaches his hand downinto the hat. "Put it back." Ma falls over backwards, and utters dumbfounded dumb��foundalso dum��found ?tr.v. dumb��found��ed, dumb��found��ing, dumb��foundsTo fill with astonishment and perplexity; confound. See Synonyms at surprise. , "What?You're not really blind?" "Of course not ..." Theold man tells Ma to move on and let him work, but Ma strikes up abargain. "I can play better than you ... we can split themoney." So Ma takes his place, fluttering his eyes closed andstaring upwards while playing noticeably better. The old man thencompletes the con by publicly praising the blind performer to thosewalking nearby and boasting that for such a performance he willpersonally give ten yuan--"Who can do better?" The scamprogresses well until the police show up and take Ma away for not havinga license to perform (as his now sighted partner slips away into thecrowd), while the crowd begins to complain that they have been taken inby a ruse. The television audience both shares this sentiment--the disgust atthe pretense taken to relieve them of their money--but are eventuallywon over by the bumbling and honest Ma, and the lengths his charactergoes to in order to make enough money to find his relative, and thenlater to pay for his girlfriend's medical care. In fact, much ofthe series revolves around Ma's increasingly strange and sometimesdesperate attempts to earn enough cash, including becoming a publicwailer at funerals (which ends when he mistakes the address and winds upat a wedding instead), a willing target dummy for an aspiring boxer andhis eccentric family, and acting as a slightly dim intellectual toentertain a retired official who thinks that nobody in the cultureministry thinks well of him anymore. Another group of characters in theseries are a gang of young beggars and thieves whom Ma befriends andeventually adopts as his "godchildren." Their ability to gofrom a life of indigent indigent1) n. a person so poor and needy that he/she cannot provide the necessities of life (food, clothing, decent shelter) for himself/herself. 2) n. one without sufficient income to afford a lawyer for defense in a criminal case. crime and beggary to proper schoolchildrenreinforces the criticism of the idle beggar, holding the donor hostageby falsifying the severity of his condition. For many people inShenyang, it is the feeling that one is being tricked, cheated, andmanipulated by beggars that evokes their feelings of frustration andanger, and leads them to hold onto their money rather than depositing itin the beggar's bowl. Conclusion So let me return now to the story of John and Xiaoping, theirencounter on the street, and the varied reactions and interpretations ofthat encounter by John himself and the Chinese spectators who witnessedthe event. It is tempting, as John originally did, to view the Chinesereactions as a form of apathy, just as the early missionary did inregards to a man taken suddenly ill on the street. To foreign critics,this evaluation of the crowd's lack of regard, and of John'sstudents' later mirth and anger towards his actions to helpXiaoping, frames larger questions about the Chinese moral economy andthe implicit prejudice of Confucian social categories. The dominantliberal humanist perspective argues that we should care, about beggarsor anyone else who is in need, and that failing to do so demonstrates acertain deficiency of moral character. I do not claim to have resolved here the ethical dilemma An ethical dilemma is a situation that will often involve an apparent conflict between moral imperatives, in which to obey one would result in transgressing another.This is also called an ethical paradox that lieswithin the Chinese experience of begging. I only hope that I havesuccessfully accounted for some of the ambivalence of Chinese urbanresidents towards beggars. Beggars, by their very presence in Shenyang,are agentive insofar in��so��far?adv.To such an extent.Adv. 1. insofar - to the degree or extent that; "insofar as it can be ascertained, the horse lung is comparable to that of man"; "so far as it is reasonably practical he should practice as they call into question the fantasies ofmodernity and development widely promulgated and expressed throughoutChina. (14) They also draw upon and challenge dominant culturalideologies of face, filiality, kinship, and citizenship (differentiallybased on urban or rural residence). As such, it is not so much thebeggars themselves--though dirty and wounded--which both repulse andcompel urban residents as it is the figure of the beggar, representingas it does the cracks within the taken-for-granted doxa of modernityitself. John saw in Xiaoping a tragic figure, a child disfigured and alone,completely bereft of agency, quite literally living or dying at the whimof a group of cruel thugs. Some might argue that it was the fact of hisforeignness alone which caused him to act, although I would disagree,conscious of the many foreigners in China who do pass beggars by withouta second thought. Undoubtedly John's foreignness freed him from, orat least made him indifferent to, the responses of others which mighthave constrained the actions of most Chinese. But what seems moreimportant was John's ability to see past Xiaoping as arepresentation of something else and to take her humanity at face value.Their encounter became an event (something that gathered a large crowdof people) simply because John, in taking an inordinate concern in thewelfare of another, went decidedly offscript. His actions made thescript itself an explicit object of discussion and negotiation, shockingthe unspoken into very obvious presence. We can see a similar shock whenI questioned the old woman begging in the street. She responded, "Ido not understand." Looking back now, we might re-evaluate herintended meaning; not simply, "I do not understand yourspeech," but "I do not understand why you are speaking." In contrast to John's reaction, his Chineseinterlocutors--urging him not to be taken in by the beggar'sdeception (it is "not real" after all)-imputed a very powerfulagency to Xiaoping. This was framed within a conception of begging as akind of trick perpetrated by secretly affluent (and purportedly veryflexible) individuals on unsuspecting and naive others. Such notionsspeak to the deeply unsettling un��set��tle?v. un��set��tled, un��set��tling, un��set��tlesv.tr.1. To displace from a settled condition; disrupt.2. To make uneasy; disturb.v.intr. discomfort that the beggar provokes. Theyare also informed by an ideology of deception as one of the constants ofhuman interaction, something to be guarded against in the case of thepianzi or tuor, or to be amused by in the case of the television show MaDashuai, but always and indelibly present. At the beginning of this article, I called begging a form of streettheater, with clearly defined roles which follow a script. There is animplicit contest involved in the encounter between the beggar and thedonor, each strategically trying to stimulate or limit the breadth ofthe donor's compassion, and thus the size of the gift. The beggarappears to say--to re-enact Levi-Strauss' openingmonologue--"l am a beggar and you are a donor. You pity me Coordinates: Pity Me is a village in County Durham in England, although other instances of the name can be found in Hexhamshire and near Morpeth. becauseI represent both what you might have been and what you claim to haveleft behind. To comfort this guilt, I will accept your money and you cango along your way." The potential donor, in turn, approaches theencounter by weighing his or her options through a set of questions:"How moved am I with the image of this beggar? Is this beggartrying to cheat me, to make herself more pitiable than she actually is?What will be the cost to me, in terms of face or the guilt ofrecognition, of simply walking past?" The answers to thesequestions and the force by which they are spoken (by beggars and donors)determine the outcome of the encounter, whether urban pedestrians willbe able to put the beggar out of sight, or whether they will becomedrawn into the play, trapped as it were by the force of thebeggar's claim. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This article, based on research in Shenyang, China from January toDecember 2005, was supported by grants from Cornell University'sEast Asia East AsiaA region of Asia coextensive with the Far East.East Asian adj. & n. Program, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Councilof Canada The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (French: (le) conseil de recherches en sciences humaine en Canada) (SSHRC/CRSH) is a Canadian federal agency which supports university-based training and research and training in the humanities and social , and by a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner-GrenFoundation. My thanks to Keith Hjortshoj, Peet van der Walt, JenShannon, Elana Chipman, Sara Shneiderman, Uarcie Middlebrooks and IonuEpurescu-Pascovici for reading earlier versions of this paper, and tothree anonymous reviewers for their comments. REFERENCES Anagnost, Ann. 2004. "The Corporeal Possessing a physical nature; having an objective, tangible existence; being capable of perception by touch and sight.Under Common Law, corporeal hereditaments are physical objects encompassed in land, including the land itself and any tangible object on it, that can be Politics of Quality(Suzhi)." 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Eric Henry Carleton University ENDNOTES (1) The notion of "cultural scripts" derives fromsocial-psychological attempts to describe the patterning of humanbehavior, often taking the semantic constituents of language as coreunits of a type of worldview world��view?n. In both senses also called Weltanschauung.1. The overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world.2. A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group. which informs social interaction(Wierzbicka 1996, 2003). Here, I employ the term less as a descriptionof "rules" by which people act, and more as the abstraction ofperformance, the regularity which people use to identify a given event(what kind of performance is this?) and act within its framework (seefor instance Bateson 2000, Goffman 1974, Turner 1974). In the case ofChina, Xin Liu (2002) takes this particular argument much further,describing how cultural scripts and roles (businessman, governmentofficial, and the mediating presence of the massage girl) define andshape the conduct of business exchanges in the southern Chinese city ofBeihai. (2) The figure of the beggar as an uncanny specter or ghost evokesboth Marx's description of the impending global revolution--hisfamous opening to the Communist Manifesto claiming "A spectre ishaunting Europe ..." (Marx 1988:54)--and Freud's equallyfamous essay, The Uncanny (1960). Here, the beggar is both a traumaticreminder of the failed promise of Chinese socialism and a threat tocurrent forms of economic accumulation and distribution. See also Royle(2003). (3) My recourse to the language of performance here is not meant toaffirm the racist descriptions of early analysts of the Chinese"character" which intimated that Chinese people were lockedinto empty dramatic forms. Smith (2001:16) writes: "Upon veryslight provocation, any Chinese regards himself in the light of an actorin a drama. He throws himself into theatrical attitudes, performs thesalaam, falls upon his knees, prostrates himself and strikes his headupon the earth, under circumstances which to an Occidental seem to makesuch actions seem superfluous, not to say ridiculous." Smith, ofcourse, fails to consider in turn the Chinese viewpoint (an odd lapseconsidering his own assertion that the Chinese lacked sympathy) andregard the strange actions of the "Occidentals" in China asthemselves likewise theatrically inspired. (4) Many accounts from the republican era (1911-1949) were fromcelebrated European intellectuals who traveled to China during thisrelatively open period. See for instance Russell (1966). (5) The following narrative is based upon my own interviews withseveral of the participants and a pamphlet (SHIC 2006) published by SHIC(Serving Humanity in Crisis) Inc. Asian Health Services Exchange, thecharity which took up the girl's case. I have altered the names ofparticipants to protect their identities. I should also be clear herethat I chose not to interview Xiaoping herself, based on my owndiscretion and at the request of several of the participants in theseevents. We felt that since her story had already been well-documented,and because of the magnitude of the trauma she had suffered, it was bestto let her focus on her future and leave this tragedy in her past. (6) Chinese accounts of begging often mention a growing"professionalization pro��fes��sion��al��ize?tr.v. pro��fes��sion��al��ized, pro��fes��sion��al��iz��ing, pro��fes��sion��al��iz��esTo make professional.pro��fes " (zhiyehua) of begging, with beggars nolonger working independently but operating as begging groups (qitaoqunti). At the same time, however, any mention of a criminal element tothese groups is usually avoided (Li and Han 2008; Liu 2008; Wang, Xu andJiang 2003). An exception is Chen (2006) who identifies criminals as onesource of beggars in Shenyang, noting that their presence has led to the"mafia-ization" (heishehuihua) of begging. (7) Xiaoping's story is in many ways tragic simply because itis also representative of the stories that are not told; only rarelydoes a beggar's life turn out so well and one can only be horrified hor��ri��fy?tr.v. hor��ri��fied, hor��ri��fy��ing, hor��ri��fies1. To cause to feel horror. See Synonyms at dismay.2. To cause unpleasant surprise to; shock. to think of how many other child beggars succumb, nameless, to disease,injury and environment the way Xiaoping almost did. Although newspapersreported that the police had arrested several men and broken up thebegging ring which recruited Xiaoping, there were undoubtedly multipleothers working within the city. (8) Consistent with my overall project, which examines theconstruction and use of Chinese forms of English, I have not altered orcorrected speech that I recorded in English from my Chinese informantsin order to preserve its feeling and cadence. In the text, I haveindicated where people spoke in English. (8) Holcombe (1895:328-329) presents a case of this from premodern pre��mod��ern?adj.Existing or coming before a modern period or time: the feudal system of premodern Japan.China: "Then, without hesitation or sign of shame, [a beggar]thrust his hands into his bosom and drew out a pair of socks padded withcotton in order to represent his feet as swollen and out of shape. Theywere made of canvas, and so accurately painted into the resemblance offeet with toenails dropping off and the flesh a mass of putrefaction putrefaction:see decay of organic matter. ,that they had deceived me in broad sunlight and on many occasions."I do not believe that any of the beggars I personally encountered were"faking" their wounds in this manner, although some may havebeen exaggerated through the use of bloodied bandages. But it was stilla common belief among Chinese that many disabled beggars were actuallyfrauds. (9) There is a sense in which Confucian and Buddhist logics ofobligation are contradictory, in so far as the Buddhist is prompted togive to the beggar in order to receive rewards in the next life, whilethe Confucian responds to the assertion of kinship or to therighteousness of others fulfilling their obligations to kin. Inpractice, however, most of my informants were unwilling or unable tomake such fine theological distinctions and saw these practices asmerely manipulating their deeply held beliefs and emotions. I thank ananonymous reviewer for making this point. (10) For other examples, see Lu's (2005:173) description of"piggybacking the goddess of mercy" (meaning a beggar carryingan elderly woman, presumably his or her mother, to beg for alms) andSchak's (1988:88) discussion of beggars using their own children orborrowing the children of others. All of these were traditionalpractices which would have been familiar to Shenyang's modern urbanresidents. (11) The performance of rural identity here does not conform toreality; it is, instead, a representation constructed by migrants forthe benefit of urban residents, playing upon urban stereotypes of themigrants. The "image" of the rural is thus virtual in everysense, the product of a mutually constructed mirage of rural existence. (12) Notar (2006) documents a similar feeling of suspicion (whichshe terms "authenticity anxiety') in a Dali marketplace insouthern China. While this concern is linked to Dali ideas of objects asspiritually constituted objects (71), Notar's larger thesis (thatauthenticity becomes a concern where capitalism alienates productionfrom particular places) applies equally well to concerns about theauthenticity of beggars. The suspicion that beggars cheat is a productof them arriving from elsewhere, while concerns about cheating ingeneral can be linked to a growing feeling of social and communalalienation. (13) Ma Dashuai played for three seasons on China CentralTelevision (CCTV CCTVabbr.closed-circuit televisionCCTVclosed-circuit television ) beginning in 2004, and dramatized the many tensionsbetween urban and rural residents. Zhao Benshan, who both directs andplays the eponymous main character, was born in Tieling, one ofShenyang's satellite cities, and as such was a household name. Thetelevision show itself was widely watched and commented on by myinformants, who identified with the main characters and the dilemmasthey faced living in the post-socialist economy. (14) Both Ivy (1995) and Willford (2006) use a similar analytic totalk about the problematic constitution of the modern, and the perceivedthreats to it from outside, in Japan and Malaysia respectively.