Change of Heart

Food aside, just about everyone complains about the Chinese.


I recently watched a documentary, Last Train Home, that made me regret some of the things I've felt, thought, and maybe even written about my take on the Chinese.


Conservatives simply hate the Chinese because, well, they're communists. Many liberals have trouble with them because of human rights issues, and I think Americans all over the political spectrum are upset about financial things. True, a lot of that is just hysteria and it's also true that buying US debt is simply us acting as their bank, but we all got excited about Japanese investment a couple decades ago and human nature hasn't changed at all since then.


I avoid buying some Chinese goods some times simply because I often want to use something like a screwdriver more than once. If it's something I expect to use once and throw away, like paper towels or eyeglasses with plastic lenses that are going to become less useful every time I use them, I often go with cheap.


This upsets people who think whenever I do that I'm supporting a slave state. While this may be true, it's more the government of China than its people that I think most have trouble with. That documentary, Last Train Home, changed my thinking about the people.


Dramatically.


I don't know what Lixin Fan wanted to do when he made his film. I rarely about things like that choosing, instead, to let the work speak to me for itself. He may have wanted to show us how the people suffer or it may have just been to show us the largest human migration on the planet.


What I got out of it was a deep appreciation for how the people in China struggle to survive and better themselves, things I cannot fault them for. Peasants living on farms have no money and (not surprisingly) want to get things for themselves and their families. To get any money at all, they have to move to cities, work in sweatshops that allow those with little or no education to assemble things, and live in horrifying conditions.


This film, by the way, shows us one such family.


After making the heartbreaking choice to leave their children, mom and dad scrape out a dismal life only to return, as most Chinese do, home to celebrate Chinese New Year. In a touching scene, they give their teenage daughter the present of a phone, and I tear up even now just thinking about it.


It's easy for us in America to take our way of life for granted. Seeing how the other 95% of the world lives is always humbling, especially since those of us who were born here had nothing to do with it.


I can no longer turn my nose up at Chinese goods, not knowing that someone, somewhere in China needs a job so they can pack their meager goods in a cardbox suitcase to travel and hope to live as well as I do.


My heart isn't stone.

The Third Person

I have neighbors whom I've never met and who obviously know nothing about me. Oddly, I think about them quite a bit.


You see, it's like this: I use them frequently when deciding things.


Let's say I want something, an event that happens quite a lot as it turns out, that someone else wants, too. We both want it, but only one of us is able to get it.


Since I want it, I have a tendency to think I should be the one to get it. That other person, no matter who they are, probably feels the same and probably ignores my wants, knows nothing of them, or somehow feels more justified in getting it than letting me have it.


At times like these, I try to remember that third person, that mysterious neighbor. I want whatever it is and so does the other guy, but since I'm rather involved in the result, my decision making process is heavily skewed. I want it and, often enough, that's more than enough reason for me to think I should get it.


The third person doesn't care which one of us gets it; he or she couldn't care less. I try to remember that and to use that to assist my own thinking. If some third party doesn't care if I get it or not, why should I?


Unless there's some compelling reason, which is hardly ever the case, it's better you should get it than me.

One Thing We Do for Love

There may be some evidence the recession is less than I thought.


Early each weekend morning, maybe just to test my dog's alertness, someone will sneak over and drop a flyer or business card on my porch advertising some service I not only don't want but can't afford. Usually these are for lawn care of home repair, but menus from local restaurants show up as well.


I've thought, more than once, about taking that as a job, but since I don't speak Spanish I can't make any progress with those doing the delivering.


This morning, however, I got something I've never seen before: a missing kitty notice.


Honey


 


Someone, and I don't think they hired anyone to deliver these, evidently walked up and down the street alerting people to their missing cat. It's always heartbreaking to see these, but they're usually just stapled to telephone poles, and what makes me the saddest is that I never learn what happened.


This leads me to fear the worst, but that's something else again.


What struck me immediately about this particular flyer is that it was in color. I can imagine easily the frantic mood that led to the kitty's owner deciding to let everyone know about the missing pet, and having returned one or two during my life, it's easy to imagine the emotional reunion they're hoping for.


What I thought about more, though, was the expense of printing up, say, one, two, or more hundreds of color flyers. It would take a lot of time, most of a night, maybe, if it was done at home and the flyers didn't look to have been run off at Kinkos, but I don't know.


I don't know if that's a sign of the amount of love the owners have for their pet ("The hell with the cost, they need to see her coloring and what she looks like!") or something else. Many moderns cannot even think of pictures as anything but color. They might only have a color printer, which is likely, or they may even work somewhere that gives them a discount on toner.


At any rate, it does show one reason why Honey may have received her name, and I hope that she's already back in her loving home.