Play the Game of Life
Ryan Petersen's Blog

Ma Lin Chao dreams of being a sailor. For days on end he has stood guard at the point where small boats unload sailors returning from their weeks or months at sea (see video below). To each boatload he asks if they need an extra deckhand, and each group of men replies they already have too many.

Having heard tales of jobs aboard ships here in the port of Shen Jia Men, on July 9th he rode the hard-seat train all the way from Anhui province, about 30 hours inland. Despite a week of disappoinment, he has not given up his quest. After all, the sailors (especially the fisherman) make far more money than he made during 4 years working in a shoe factory. He's also been to Nanjing and Suzhou looking for factory jobs, but the most they offer is 600 RMB ($75 US) per month. "It won't even cover my cell phone charges," he says with a smile. "My girlfriend is still back in our farming village."

"It's dangerous work, being a fisherman," I tell him. He laughs, saying "You foreigners don't understand." And anyways, he has no choice. He needs to earn enough money to pay for his cell phone bill, and to pay the rent. He's managed to find a place to stay near the port for 100 RMB ($12.50 US) for a month. When I tell him I am paying 120 RMB per night at my hotel, he chuckles. "I know," he says. "If I stayed in a hotel, I would only have enough money to stay here for one night."

Ma Lin Chao knows the price of almost everything, and he's quick to ask the price of anything he doesn't know. The small boats charge 2 RMB to take you out to visit with the big ships. The guys who drive the rickshaw-bicycles make 40 RMB per day. And it costs 3 RMB for an hour at the Internet cafe, though he has never gone online.

"How much is the plane ticket to your America?". . . "How much did that camera cost?". . ."How much money did you make in your last job?" When I tell him I made more than $3,000 per month, the word "uaaah" naturally escaped from his lips as he stared out at the ships in wonder. "It would take me 4 years to make that much money," he says, shaking his head.

Ma Lin Chao's ID card says he is 23, but he tells me, his father added a few years to his age when he was born so that the government wouldn't stop his son from getting married if they determined he was "too young."

Thinking of his father, he suddenly gets the courage to ask me if I would take some photos of him and mail them to him. Oddly enough I was just starting to wonder when I would ask him to take his photo. He boils over with satisfaction as he pictures his parents pride at receiving pictures
of their boy with a foreigner. And that without imagining that the first foreigner he ever met would slip a 100 RMB suprise under that last photo.

Labels: china, my favorite posts