thanksgiving 2008

Two weeks left in Nanjing, it is cold here and I just caught one from my roommate so I am sitting in pajama bottoms I long-term borrowed from Shawna and my recently-bought zip-up sweater that looks a little gay reading about the varying inadequacies of health coverage in rural China. I have to do this for a presentation on Wednesday with a few other classmates. Everyone in my program practically just started working on this project. Our topic is street vendors, and for my own research paper and part I am focusing on health care and using street vendors as a case study. We've interviewed a few here and there, but street vendors are getting more and more sparse as the city tries to clean itself up in the name of civilized manners (as the countless red banners throughout the city proclaim: 让南京更美好).
Generally speaking, many of the stories are quite similar: there was no work to be found in Xinjiang or wherever rural place, working hours go from 6am to 10pm, there is no health insurance for them since they come from the countryside. And then there's the "rugged adventurer" kid from Aspen, CO in my group who asks in broken Mandarin: "你喜欢你的工作吗？ Do you like your job?" There's a pretty obvious answer to that, especially when someone spends every day burning their arm to move coals around at the bottom of a stove to bake bread. But I am pretty surprised at how open some of these vendors will be. One fruit seller said he wished the Taiwanese government would take over. When someone asked the Uyghur people who sell skewers how much money they make in a weekend, they looked confused: “周末？ 周末是什么意思? Weekend? What it is the meaning of that?"
Anyway, I came back from Hunan last weekend feeling a bit lonely. Spending time with my relatives there reminded me of that warm feeling togetherness of family brings. It felt like a holiday, it was my surrogate Thanksgiving a week before. So I had a taste of family warmth I hadn't experienced in a while. I miss eating dinner with them, and then sitting on the couch watching Chinese soap operas while entertaining little Ziyi 子依. When I said goodbye to Ziyi and tried to press my forehead against hers, she slapped me across the face and laughed at me. Later on I was inspired with an idea to make a children's book in Chinese, but I'm gonna keep that idea secret since this blog is public ;)
This last picture I've posted is one of my favorites from last weekend...