Photo of Shanghai Beggar by Michael Robinson
Asleep on her cotton mat, Yi Chun Yan was awoken by tearing, burning pain and the sounds of a hundred small children screaming. She crawled through the smoke and fire to the door, where the bodies of suffocated and burning children were strewn along the hallway. Coughing and crying, Chun Yan half crawled and half dragged herself towards the stairs. She almost made it down the second flight when the ceiling, supported only by glowing beams, collapsed. Lying on her back and kicking with her legs, burning timber and concrete plummeted onto her body. Believing herself to be dead, Chun Yan lost consciousness.
Chun Yan awoke to strong hands, tearing her scorched skin, dragging her from the building and across the red dirt road. Her unknown savior lifted her into the back seat of a sedan. Blackness again.
Blinding fluorescent light woke her for the third time that night. Lying on a gurney in the Mahan hospital, she took stock of her surroundings. Her eyesight was strangely impaired. She could only see if she closed one eye. Her preschool students, the children she knew so well, were unrecognizable. A girl’s face was bandaged, though blood seeped through in the area of her eyes. A boy’s legs were crushed, almost flattened by the falling debris.
She tried to look at herself, but her neck was braced. In her peripheral she could see her arms splayed beside her. Her right arm had splotchy burns but otherwise looked unharmed. That was good. She looked to the other side. Her left arm was bent at a strange angle, and her hand was ripped apart. She counted her two remaining fingers before nausea and pain forced her, again, into oblivion. The next time would wake, her arm would be gone.
I meet her for the first time on the steps of an underpass on the historic Bund, Shanghai. The rain is relentless, and though it is a warm night I can feel my wool shirt wet against my chest. It is still early enough for moderate traffic through the pedestrian tunnel, but people walk briskly with down-turned faces masked by dark umbrellas.
Xiao Yi is a vision of suffering. The burn is a broad diagonal stripe across her face where the flaming timber landed. Her lips are gone, melted off, revealing her upper palette which is at an almost 90 degree angle from her face. Her nose is an angry stump, that snarls upwards.. Above her eyes, which are set too far apart and at different height, is one lonely eyebrow. Her naked arm is amputated slightly below the elbow.
Although I ignorantly question her ability to speak, I approach her and ask if she would tell me her story. She attempts a smile and agrees. Xiao Yi gives me a piece of cardboard to sit on. But before I even ask where she was born the foot traffic slows, and we acquire a semicircle of spectators. They interrupt our conversation with questions directed toward me. “What are you talking to her about? And why?” Xiao Yi is becoming more and more withdrawn and I don’t blame her for it. I curse myself for my stupidity. Any spectacle in China will inevitably draw a crowd of gawking rubberneckers.
A woman produces a digital camera and takes a picture. Xiao Yi leaps to her feet and violently attacks the woman, grabbing the camera from her hands. “You think you can just take a picture of me? What gives you a right to just take pictures of people? Get rid of it! Do you think you’re going to make money from my face? Your heart is black!”
The commotion attracts the attention of the two traffic guards above us. The situation is getting out of control. Xiao Yi, bless her, looks at me and says “Come back at 11:30 tonight. We can have some privacy when the street is deserted.” I am filled with gratitude, as it was painful to see this woman change from cheerful to withdrawn and then to anger. My unrequited entourage follows me up the steps (now resembling tiny waterfalls), and I disappear into the Shanghai night.
Yi Chun Yan, nicknamed Xiao Yi (Little Yi), was born into vagrant poverty 1975. Her mother, an elementary schoolteacher, traveled constantly. Sent out to the countryside like millions of other Chinese after the Cultural Revolution, Xiao Yi’s mother found love in the arms of a fellow schoolteacher in Hunan. The relationship lasted long enough to produce two daughters, and then they separated. Xiao Yi lived with her mother, while her younger sister went with her father.
The nomadic lifestyle was difficult for little Chun Yan. She was never in one school long enough to forge lasting friendships, and she received no tenderness from her mother. To her, Xiao Yi was nothing but a reminder of an ill-fated and bitter marriage. But her tenacity in school, useful contacts and glowing compassion gave her excellent prospects for teaching.
After graduating in 1995, Xiao Yi took a probationary job teaching preschool children in rural Hubei. Finally claiming independence and stability, she aggressively embraced her new life. She loved her work, and her students were a daily source of joy. Surrounded by friends and suitors, working a job she loved, away from the coldness of her mother, Xiao Yi was, for the first time in her life, happy.
At precisely 11:30 I return to the underpass with bated breath. I sorely hope that Chun Yan has not reconsidered her proposal. If she had, I would surely not find her. But as the tunnel comes into view, there she is. Her canvas bag is packed and slung in the crook of her amputated arm. In her other hand she is carrying an open umbrella. She proposes that we go to one of the many cheap bars that litter the streets off of the Bund. Her head barely reaches my chest, but I still need to walk briskly to keep up with her. She tries to hold the umbrella over my head as we but gives up, exasperated. “You’re too tall. My arm is tired.”
She guides me up the thoroughfare, negotiating through oncoming traffic, under a broken gap in an iron fence, across more traffic, and finally up an encouraging side street. We enter a dark bar that promises privacy, and make our way to the back. The nonplussed waitress brings a menu, which Xiao Yi takes one look at before proclaiming the audacity of the scandalously high prices. I tell her that the I will pay for whatever she wants, but she is inconsolable. She rises and charges down the street to another bar. We enter and find seats, but it is not meant to be. Again, she finds an insurmountable fault with the establishment and leads me, once again, to the rainy street. Just as I’m wondering whether we would actually find a place that met Xiao Yi’s lofty criteria, she finally settles on an open-air restaurant with suspiciously low-priced soup.
After the school boardinghouse fire that killed 19 children and shattered the lives of many survivors, Xiao Yi spent three years in and out of the hospital. The most delicate procedure was resetting her eyes. Her eye sockets were crushed by the debris, and had shifted downwards. She lost the sight in her right eye during surgery.
Her various operations cost a total of 60 thousand RMB. Though the state contributed some funds to her medical costs, the bill was greatly paid for by friends and relatives. While under care, the Civil Affairs office promised her a monthly allowance of three thousand RMB for the rest of her life. They have yet to pay her anything at all.
Once she was able to spend some nights at home, Xiao Yi was transferred to a hospital in Hunan where her mother could look after her. Unfortunately her mother soon lost enthusiasm for the difficult task of caring for her recuperating daughter, and abandoned the responsibility completely.
Abandoned by her family, hideously disfigured, and without hope, Xiao Yi attempted suicide for the first time. Fortunately, the hospital staff spotted her before she jumped from the building’s roof. They caught her in a makeshift net, but she still hit the pavement hard enough to give her severe head trauma.
The injury to her brain temporarily robbed her of the ability to speak, and so Xiao Yi spent the next year relearning her own language. The neurological damage also made writing a difficult endeavor-a condition that persists to this day. Whereas before she might have retained her profession as an educator, it was now impossible.
Her friend, who saw the empty bottle of sleeping pills and forced Xiao Yi to throw them up, thwarted her second suicide attempt. Determined to end her life, she found an old well, with the intention of throwing herself down it and drowning. But as she stood on the edge, looking down into the black promise of death, Xiao Yi found she could not bring herself to jump. Defeated, she resigned herself to her new life, such as it was.
As she tells her story, Xiao Yi commands the attention of everyone in the tiny restaurant. When we first entered together, the other diners were disgusted by her face; affronted by the prospect of eating while looking at such extreme ugliness. But now they hang on every word. As she describes each terrible moment, their faces fall and they look ashamed. The chef, his white apron stained by blood and grease, comes out of the kitchen to lean against a wall and smoke a cigarette.
Xiao Yi moved to Shanghai in 2002 to take residence with her grandmother. There she learned to make jewelry to sell on the street. She offers me one of her handmade bracelets -she has a few left. Her business was successful due to the beauty and quality of her wares, and was able to buy greater inventory of materials.
One day a policeman stopped, and admired her jewelry. The man demanded protection money from her, and threatened violence if she refused. Not willing to give into the corrupt policeman’s demands, he kicked her in the stomach and left.
Not long after the incident, a man supposedly hired by the policeman seized all of her jewelry and ran. Xiao Yi chased him, but could not run fast enough. All of her money was invested in the jewelry. She pleaded with the corrupt policeman, but he denied her assistance. From that day, Xiao Yi has been a beggar. She does not hold a sign, or clutch at passersby, but just sits quietly with a bowl.
The community of beggars in Shanghai is not a friendly one. Shortly after she started begging, Xiao Yi was severely beaten by other amputees for intruding on someone else’s territory. The competition is fierce and few pedestrians are generous. Many beggars are young and able-bodied, but draw sympathy by carrying children. These children are usually rented or loaned by impoverished parents.
Police and thugs are a constant problem to the begging community. Many have no qualms about seizing money from begging cups or demanding protection fees or “lucky money.” Xiao Yi has learned to avoid the police by learning their rotation schedule and positioning herself where she can see trouble coming.
Though sometimes unusually generous, foreigners can also be a source of danger and extortion. An Australian journalist tried to photograph her as a part of an article about Shanghai’s homeless. When she refused, he hired a young boy to take a picture of her, which he sold to an online news site for a large sum. Another foreigner tried to rape her.
Through the entire story, the only time when she looks genuinely pained is when she recounts the story of her image being put on display by the deceitful journalist.
Life is getting increasingly worse for Xiao Yi and the beggars of Shanghai. When the Olympic Torch was in the city, she was threatened with prison if she appeared on the streets. And there are rumors that begging will be entirely outlawed in the near future. If this happens, Xiao Yi will throw herself at the mercy of her sister for survival.
She tells me “I’m saving up so that one day I can get surgery to become beautiful. But my story isn’t so bad. There are people here who have had it worse.”
She insists on escorting me to the nearest taxi. She says that she hopes I’ll visit her whenever I’m in the neighborhood. She says, “Welcome to the Bund.”