Cheap Labor

Our stroller has been a bit squeaky lately. This is our super-expensive stroller, which has fit as a replacement for a car since we bought it. It carries not only 2 growing children, but also loads of groceries and boxes of diapers. This stroller carries us to the swimming pool and the sand playground, with bits and pieces ground into its nooks and crannies all the way home. So its no wonder that the poor thing would begin to squeak.

A tune up in the states would cost around $75 at a bike shop.

We walked down our local alley to our little bike man. He chatted with us while he finished his rice, and then got straight to work. He gently filled the tires with air, putting more thought into this process than I'd ever seen anyone do. He oiled each joint, giving all three tires a thorough once-over and checking by sound and by motion to make sure the stroller was running smoothly by the time I left.

Cost? 8 RMB, or just over $1.

The man was an enjoyable character as well. His thickly tanned skin and his flip-flops made him fit in with "the peasantry" in China, the reason that most women cover their arms and carry umbrellas when out in the sun. But he wore his dark skin in a more Western style, as if he spent his days hanging out at the local drink shop, tooling over people's bikes, and leading a simple and easy existence. In China, as in many countries, the poor and the downtrodden are not by any means the least intelligent. The masses in China are tied to a specific job, a specific place. If that job and place does not provide you and your family with a quality education or suitable healthcare, you may well do without. People work as ayis who have the minds and the discipline to run their own businesses, or certainly to work in any Western office. Our bike dude, he was a smart man. He enjoyed his work. Who would have been a drop-out of the materialist society in America, was a man simply comfortable with his lot in life in China.

We have also decided to hire movers for our impending jump across the river. Too many details and too little time to fit it all in. So I invited 4 different companies to survey our home this morning. For under $500 USD, an international company will move our family across town. This pays 8-10 people for a full day's work, besides covering the overhead of an international moving firm. And this is being paid overtime, because we'll be moving on a Saturday. Five hundred dollars is a decent chunk of money - but if I break it down to an hourly rate, each man will make about $5 an hour to pack my boxes and move them for me. My time and peace of mind is definitely worth that much.

Hooray for cheap labor!