Scarcity and Creativity

     Even though most Chinese people in this city are not desperately poor, plenty of them are a mere generation removed from times of near-starvation.  So it's second nature for many to conserve their yuan by finding a cheaper or even a free way to do something.  This makes for interesting sights around town.    

     A short walk from our sprawling apartment complex is a 3-block stretch close to the fishing harbor, where there's lots of re-use happening.  Just inside the locked gate leading to the harbor is a rusty, faded orange Hyundai cargo container, seeing a second life as a storage building.  Empty detergent and peanut oil bottles, gleaned from the garbage, are strung together and lying on the sidewalk, maybe to float a fishing net.  A long freight train of well-used styrofoam boxes, all shapes and sizes, sit end-to-end on this same sidewalk.  Often people stop by on their bikes, pick up a few, and ride away.  I've seen people use these to keep food cool.    One afternoon a mother with 2 young children had found an unusually clean, white styro box, great for a playpen.  She was sitting in it with her two youngsters while they had fun, right there on the sidewalk.   Another mother sat in the shade on a stool, holding her baby to the side when it was time for business.  A checkbook-sized fallen leaf picked up from the sidewalk waited under the baby, her bare bottom peeking through the split seat.  Who needs a diaper?  

     Today the sun shone all day, for the first time in many days, so that inspired lots of laundry activity.  People along "Old Street" had lots of clothing out drying this afternoon.  Flopped on fences.  On hangers in the trees.   Over the handlebars, basket, seat and rear rack of a bicycle.  Over the handle, frame and canopy of a baby stroller.  Who needs a clothesline?

     The most engaging scene of the day was a man using the sidewalk for his livelihood.   On a busy, wide walkway just behind a bus stop, a man was busy writing a narrative.  At least I assume that's what it was, a 6' long work that he was slowly and neatly adding to.  A gaggle of schoolboys in their uniforms were among those gathered around reading quietly as they waited for a bus.  The calligraphy was beautiful.  This browned and dirty man of the street was not.  His bare feet were deformed so that he couldn't walk.  He was lying on his belly on a dolly, which was covered with a few blankets and custom-accessorized with an attached umbrella that he could put up for shade.  He used a piece of thick foam right in front of the dolly to cushion his elbows, as his upper body hung over the front to do his writing.  He'd dip a rag in a container of water and wet down a horizontal line of bricks in the sidewalk.  Then he'd take a piece of white chalk  and carefully write perfectly-spaced characters in each brick.  Because the bricks were wet, the chalk made sharp, clean lines.  After he finished a line, he wiped his brow, scooted the dolly backwards, and wet down the next row of bricks.  He had a bowl for coins set out at the beginning of his story.  Who needs paper or a computer or a publisher to be a writer?