Starbucks and Social Crises

Can I just say that I am so glad to live in a city with Starbucks? God surely knows that, though I am a very, very weak person, if I can just have a quiet place and a cup of coffee to retreat to every once in a while, I can press on. Adam and I have finally resigned ourselves to the fact that Starbucks is pretty much the only place we can be assured of having a quiet, comfortable, peaceful place to get work done. Both of us have a very difficult time working at home, and so often if we want to accomplish anything (administratively or study-wise) we need to go someplace else. Here are some of the problems we’ve encountered at other non-Starbucks places:


-no restroom or else it’s so far away you have to pack up all your stuff and take it with you when you need to use it


-loud, annoying, repetitive music

-lack of temperature control (apparently some businesses here are either so penny-pinching or so earth-loving that they don’t like to turn on the heat in the winter or the AC in the summer)

So we love our Starbucks, for those days when we are weary of being strangers in a foreign land. And then you go in to the bathroom and see this sign on the wall:

“For your safety, please refrain from squatting on the toilet.”

(Apparently, some people are not familiar with Western toilets and attempt to use them in the same way as squatty potties? Do they stand on the seat? I have no idea how that would work…)

Speaking honestly, I sometimes feel spoiled living in such a city with access to so many Western niceties. We have friends in other parts of the country for whom going into the closest big city to find Heinz ketchup is a major treat (we just get ours at the Wal-mart that’s a 10 minute walk from our house)! It’s easy to forget that most of the rest of the country does not live like this. For most Chinese, moving to a big city like ours is THE DREAM.
There is a major shift happening in this country, with people leaving the countryside by the millions in hopes of making it big in the cities.  I read one article recently that discussed how most of the younger migrant workers who are leaving the countryside for the city have had no training in farming skills.  To quote the article, "This shift is of critical importance because the very infrastructure of farming is being destroyed. The inherited link between mankind and the land is being broken, the report said." For a country in which the majority of the country has been farmers, these are monumental changes--historically, economically, but especially socially.


To me, the most tragic part is how this trend is affecting China's families.  There have been a slew of articles recently about China's Left Behind Children.  The gist of the problem is this--in order to make money for their families, mothers and fathers must leave their villages and go to work in cities (sometimes different cities from each other), so that they can then send money back to their families.  Sometimes these parents bring their children with them, but often they leave them in their villages to be raised by grandparents. Thus, these "left behind children" grow up with little to no relationship with their parents.  You can only imagine what this means for a society in which this is repeated a million times over, not to mention what it does to the children (and the parents) emotionally and psychologically.  So we might be tempted think, "Well, then they should just bring their children with them!" Not so easy. Many major cities here have a residence card system--education, healthcare, etc are all accessible only if you have a residence card for that city.  Migrant workers have no such residence card and so their children, if they were to move with them, would have no opportunity for education, etc.  You see the problem.  And I see no way to fix it!

This is not just a far away tragedy for us.  Our own dear house helper has a teenaged daughter who lives hundreds of miles away in their hometown.  She sees her in the summer time when the daughter is out of school, during the Chinese New Year, and maybe another 1-2 if they have time/money enough to travel.  It breaks our hearts.  But our helper has told us, life for them has been much better (financially speaking) since she moved here. But I know it pains her to be away from her daughter.  I want to fix this.  I can't fix this.  Have mercy, Lord.