Sam At Large

I’ve always wanted to see a market like this.  This is where western consumerism hasn’t intruded into community life and it’s something I wish we had at home.  Although, imagining people selling live eels in a tub of water or cages of live chickens on the streets of Walnut Grove is pretty funny.

Today is my last day in Changsha before I go to Hengyang. It has certainly been an amazing experience to be here in this city of 10 million people… which is considered a second- or third-tier city, by Chinese standards.

Last night, the entire Changsha team, international staff and board members got together for dinner.  I ate stinky tofu. I wouldn’t probably want to eat it again, but it wasn’t as bad as some said it would be.

In the morning, I went with my co-worker, Tanya, to visit the local DVD market and computer market. The DVD market was impressive. The computer market is an experience all in its own.  Four floors in a department store-sized building that is essentially a flea market crossed with Best Buy.  If you want to build a computer or get parts or hard drives or USB stuff or speakers or GPS systems or cables or cameras or iPhones or iPads or cases or bags or blank DVDs… it was a little overwhelming, to be honest.  And that was just one of the markets in a four or five block area. There apparently are several more.  Prices were pretty good.  I especially like the software area that had Windows 2005 for sale.

I’m going out to the Walking Street a little later to have dinner and people watch. Should be fun.  In the meantime, I’m in my hotel room watching TV.  You would lose your mind with the ads, they are so funny.  Consumerism here is something to behold and has its quirks.  Like the fact that they always stick some Chinglish into their ads or signs.  So, I’m watching this ad for a cell phone that is an Omega… er, Omeca brand that is supposed to resemble an Omega… er, Omeca watch that you can buy locally.  As the various models seductively move the cell phone around their faces (WTF?), flashes of text appear in Chinese as well as English on screen. “Beautiful sun predicts perfect storm” is one of them.  That’s followed by some guy hopping into his Porsche 911.  I… Must… Buy… That… Phone…

Now there’s some sort of documentary on state TV (one of about 50 state channels, it appears) about how the government has such a difficult time relocating rural farmers despite it being in the farmer’s best interest. If only the farmers would understand that the beneficial government only has their best interests at heart. My goodness, TV here is awesome.

Not really a lot to report as I’ve been in meetings for the last couple of days.  But, I’ve a had a chance to sample some more of the local cuisine and it’s pretty darn awesome.

There’s another aspect to China that I didn’t know about until getting here.  Massage.  Not the weird type, before you get all worked up!  But honest-to-goodness massage that works you over like you’ve never been worked over before.  The people who work there have fingers of steel!  My masseuse — No. 72, because all customer service workers have number tags instead of name tags in this country — damn near killed me when hitting this knot in my back. One of my co-workers was on the other side of the room and she asked if the massage was too hard and did I want No. 72 to ease up a bit.

“Maybe,” I mumbled back as No. 72 kept working away.

Word to the wise: don’t let someone die in front of your place of business.

As I arrived with a couple of new friends at the Lighthouse facility this morning, we noticed this crowd of people all looking at something on the sidewalk.  It turns out it was someone who died.  We think he was a road worker doing construction nearby and he just dropped dead of a heart attack or something.

Apparently this must be a common occurrence or something.  Within an hour someone had a whole block of firecrackers to light off to chase away the evil spirits.  I was wondering why I kept hearing firecrackers in the neighbourhood near my hotel.  It goes to show you how often people die all around you.

I don’t think I’m going to do a blog post for every single day. That would probably be a little crazy. But I thought I’d share a couple of hightlights from yesterday (Sunday) and a bit more about today.

I’ve been pretty impacted by this trip already. I knew that seeing kids who have been abandoned by their families would affect me at some level. And it has. Yesterday, I went out with the director of our China operations to a boys home and a girls home to do a little singing and stories. These are probably our more high functioning kids, but they all have forms of Cerebral Palsy or other type of physical and mental disabilities. I don’t think I expected them to be downright sad, but I did not expect them to be so happy. More the fool me.

These are kids whose families said, “I can’t afford to have you” or “You will not be able to be a good son/daughter” so they tossed them away. I’m sure many of the families had regrets doing so, but the fact remains that these children were destined to live and die unloved. But some people I work with came along and said, “No, your life has value and we’re going to show you love.” It brought tears to my eyes to see them so happy, singing and listening to the stories.

Today, I went around to most of the ICC projects (as our facilities are called) in Changsha. I started off with the Lighthouse where we do physical, speech and conductive therapies (among others). I walked around and settled down with these 2-4 year olds who have Cerebral Palsy and their therapist encourages them to move their muscles. It’s amazing how this early work means these kids have a chance at a real life down the road. I then sat holding this blind boy’s hand for the longest time.

I was then toured around many of the other facilities like our Community Outreach Program and the Vocational Training Centre. You can see the photos of the kids making simple jewelry and cards at the VTC. COP is where ICC reaches right out into the community to provide supports and services to families with disabled kids so that abandonment isn’t seen as the only solution.

I ended up at the local children’s welfare centre where ICC has a portion of the building. This is where many of our most disabled kids are. We have this little boy who’s 12 years old. He doesn’t look like he’s a day over four. I found out that he has spina bifida and has been close to death so many times. He’s a little fighter and easily a favourite among all the workers.

I’ll see more next week in Hengyang and Sanmenxia. But I now go into several days of meetings with a real sense of who I’m doing my work for in Vancouver.