Am I a philanthropist or a dupe?

Beijing’s one of those places where you can run across the street for a cheeseburger and come back with a watch and five pairs of socks, without even stepping into a store.

I work opposite the Silk Market, knock-off Promised Land, and a much more instructive tourist trap than the Great Wall or, dare I say, Tiananmen Square. It used to be a breezy hutong swarming with fake Rolex peddlers and their marks. Now, in this era of progress, it’s a stuffy multi-story mall swarming with fake Rolex peddlers and their marks. Shoppers leaving the place invariably wear the dazed, exhausted expressions of those who have just run a consumer gauntlet [Hollow! You want silk scarf? Lookah lookah.

Hollow sir! Come here!] The young country girls manning the stalls are experts at turning counterfeit goods into pink paper.The street peddlers outside, however, are a different breed, starving winter wolves with such bravado and tenacity that the buffalo tourists they prey on frequently leave their young behind, desperate to escape.

Knowing this, I waited until ten o’clock in the evening to dare the crossing to McDonald’s. I thought I had made it until I saw her, waiting on the opposite side. In a Discovery Channel moment, her gleaming avaricious eye caught mine, and I knew I had been targeted for culling, the rest of the herd moving on without me, inured to this daily spectacle of Darwinian money transfer on the savannah. “You want suck!” she barked. I didn’t know if I was being propositioned or called a Nancy Boy until she produced an orange supermarket bag full of socks. “Bu yong, bu yong, xie xie,” I muttered, breaking into a power walking stride. Pick slower prey, lady. But she’d have none of it. She loped along beside me and got right in my way, forcing the confrontation.

The moment I looked her squarely in the face I knew I’d leave the field poorer. It was a weathered face, lined by privation and exposure, but no L’Oreal cream can bestow the radiant confidence and unquenchable optimism she wore. Unschooled, yet with born instinct, she sensed her victory and put the goods in my hand. From here, it would be time-honored ritual, played out in Chinese for authenticity.

“How much?”

“Five for fifty. So cheap.”

“No, no. Goodbye.”

“You say how much.”

“Twenty.”

“How about forty?”

“Don’t need, don’t need. Thank you.”

“Wait a minute – thirty! Okay, come back. Twenty.”

I’m not even sure how she got the forty yuan off me for the Rolex. I mean, I could tell it was shoddy even under the dim yellow glow of the golden arches. It said “TSwiss MadeT”. The ‘VI’ on the face was upside down and backwards.

Think I’m a sucker? Coming out of the underground tunnel to the crossing, I had ignored no less than three beggars, and gruffly knocked off the hand of a decrepit old woman with the audacity to tug at my sleeve. Now you think I’m heartless. Know that easily ninety percent of Beijing beggars are enterprising farmers who hang around town when the harvesting’s done, often making more in a day by looking pathetic than by turning a plow for a month. That kind of entrepreneurship sits ill with me, although not as ill as the ghouls who mutilate castaway children for sympathy change.

But the bumpkin who hauls her wares into town, then engages in the most brutal direct marketing until the dark hours? I have to respect that. City dwellers who had the chance to go to high school disdain these rustic cheapjacks, and expats usually look on them as a blight, as I did. However, living in Beijing will eventually awaken even the most calloused soul to the disparities of modern life, disparities even David Duke couldn’t rationalize but would have to attribute to the cruel indifference of fate.

How’s an everyday joe like me make a difference? By giving to charity? With fundraisers in America keeping up to ninety-five cents of every dollar they get, I can imagine what’s going on here. I’d rather pass a nine-ounce kidney stone than donate to some phony philanthropists’ charity banquet. And it only makes sense to help out people already demonstrating they want to help themselves. I hope that of the sixty RuMBas I gave up to that feisty peddler, a good portion was profit. God knows she’s not buying drugs or booze with it – probably noodles and smokes for her lazy husband. Sure, charity begins at home. After that, you take it to the streets.

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