One of those days

Or rather, two of those days. Those horrible kinds of days where you just want to put your head under the covers and pretend it's all a dream. The bile is starting to rise again, and it's starting to feel like you lot are in for another rant... The worst thing (well, one of the worst things) about Shanghai is the amount of homeless on the streets. Quite an incongruous sight in the wealthiest communist country in the world, no? They run the gamut, from the blind erhu players to the grubby people who crawl along the aisles of the metro system. The deformed, disfigured and despairing. The worst are the young children who should belong in a burns or reconstructive surgery unit. It's really disturbing watching them wandering the aisles of the metro, grunting at people to give them money. Even more disturbing is the fact that, in a lot of cases, this disfigurement wasn't accidental. A lot of them have been massively, permanently scarred for life by parents in search of the next meal. All to score some extra sympathy and a few extra kuai. It really is a sickening sight. The children of thalidomide, the burns victims, the mentally ill, the poverty-stricken migrants...all of them with their hands out begging for cash. The word on the street from most Shanghainese is that the majority of these are faking it, and can somehow support themselves with a pretty good lifestyle. Professional beggars, if you will. Considering the sheer number though, I don't see how that could be possible. Besides, who the hell would want to stand in the burning sun all day with their hand out? Do I pay them any heed or money? Rarely. If someone actually does something worth paying money for, like some of the blind erhu players, then I'll gladly chip in a few kuai. But sitting on the street corner and using your child as a goddamn bargaining chip? Not in a million years. I sometimes wonder whether I should be more generous to the begging population. After all, would it really hurt me to be down a few kuai every month? But then I think of how that could encourage others to follow the beggars' lead and become beggars themselves. People such as the empty-bottle-collecting migrants. It doesn't look like that much of a jump. Those extra few kuai I give away every month could lead to another child being mutilated by their parents or boss. Things are only going to get worse. The illegal migrant population is always increasing, with people from the countryside coming to Shanghai in search of streets paved in gold, only to discover a lifetime of picking up bottles or begging, and never being able to afford a ticket home. Some life. The growing inequality gap doesn't help either, with the rich getting richer and the poor becoming even more destitute. Shanghai's blessing of economic might is also its curse. Y'know, all in all, it's just your average communist Paradise on Earth.