Portrait of Mr. Chiu

I met Mr. Chiu in the OCT (Overseas Chinese Town) Park, a theme park/residential area that houses man-made Shenzhen attractions such as Windows of the World, Splendid China, Chinese Folk Culture Village, and Happy Valley. He was pulling weeds out of the flower bed by the road when I decided to stop by and help him. I had been walking for over an hour and was going to see more of the park before heading back, but decided it was better to look for something else to do (I forget sometimes I have no schedule and can do whatever I please - this is one instance I actually remembered and was well rewarded for putting my plans aside).


Mr. Chiu would not let me help him initially, so we just chatted at the beginning. He first apologized for his poor Mandarin even though it was mostly intelligble to me; he said he hasn't spoken Mandarin in a long time, as everyone around him including his supervisor spoke Cantonese. Mr. Chiu was from Maoming, Guangdong in the South and had come to Shenzhen after his boss at the factory told him of the new opportunities here. However, the work is hard, and he is already in his early 50s. In the mornings he cleans the streets and works on maintaining the gardens in the afternoon until 6:10pm. He works everyday outside of national holidays, and earns about 1100 RMB a month, roughly 35 RMB (about $7 USD) a day, though he is given free meals and lodging. His wife also works in the complex, but their 3 sons are in Guangzhou.

I asked Mr. Chiu about his background, and he said that growing up, he did not like to study. Consequently, he only went to school until 3rd grade before he quit and helped out on the family farm. His sons also were not fond of studying, and had all quit in middle school. They enjoy playing mahjong, and, Mr. Chiu says proudly, are quite good players; however, perhaps they are not good enough, as they have lost much money gambling away their money. Mr. Chiu also said he wasted quite a bit of money on cigarettes, a habit he had picked up since he was 19 through friends. The supervisor gets mad when he smokes while he's working, but nonetheless he can't help himself sometimes.

I asked Mr. Chiu if he had dinner plans, and he said that usually he eats in the cafeteria with all the other employees of the OCT Park. The food there is quite terrible, but it is enough. I asked him what he liked to eat, and he said that sometimes if he has a bit of extra savings, he would buy some pork lard/oil to add flavor to his rice.

After talking for quite some time, I convinced him to have me help him weed the garden, as he was falling behind due to our conversation. We worked at it for some time until about 5:40pm, when he said he was going to call it a day. I invited him out to dinner, but he repeatedly declined me out of politeness and also because he felt embarrassed to be dressed in workman's clothes in a nice restaurant. I told him it was no bother - my shorts were not so clean either after all the gardening, and my t-shirt was nothing formal. We compromised in the end - I would buy him dinner but it would have to be take-out. So we washed the mud off our hands at the nearby water faucet and headed over to the plaza.

We asked around the various restaurants, but Mr. Chiu was clearly intimidated by the high end restaurants even when we were only inquiring about take-out possibilities. In the end, there appeared to be not too many take-out places in the area, and so we settled on getting some prepared food to go from the supermarket. I got a plate of cold noodles, 4 chicken drumsticks, and a couple cold drinks for the two of us, all for about $27 RMB ($4 USD). We ate together outside and chatted some more before exchanging phone numbers. He offered to take me to the subway stop via his bike, and so I pedaled to the subway with him in the back - quite an experience, due to my lack of experience biking with a load and with the local traffic patterns - where we parted ways.



On reflection, I think it's time I get out of my own world and do my best to really connect with people from different backgrounds, to understand them better. This reminds me to greet and be nicer to the people we often tend to never see or talk to - the garbage collectors, street cleaners, etc - and not take for granted their hard work in maintaining the various parks, city commons, etc. At the same time, such interactions may be delicate, and it is important to try to approach from a humble position in order to avoid natural class biases and unbalanced social interactions.