goodness

My race number:

I texted it to a friend who is meeting me at the finish and she called me immediately and said, “你的号是很好的!”  “Your number is really good!”  Eight is a lucky number in China, the luckiest, because it sounds similar to the word for “getting rich.”   (In case anyone wants more information about Chinese numerology, the unluckiest number is four, because it sounds almost the same as the word for “death.”)

On Thursday morning during my final short run before the marathon a phrase/cliché kept going through my mind.  “Good as gold.”  It had nothing to do with me or my expectations about the race, or getting rich, but rather contrasting what I was observing as I ran my last few 0.45 mile laps of the little park nearby with the recent phenomenon here of the newest iPhone, in gold, selling out really, really quickly. So quickly that clever retailers here have developed stickers to put on your regular, plain, not-gold iPhone so you too can jump on that bandwagon.

Deng Xiaoping’s apocryphal slogan from early in China’s reform process, “to get rich is glorious,” has definitively taken hold, and produced a society where gold iPhones  at nearly US $1000 each are apparently a desirable acquisition.  In a more mundane, middle-class development, more and more people also acquire pets.  These cats and dogs are well-cared for if they are fortunate, but if not, they suffer the fate of unwanted animals around the world and end up on the street.  China does not yet have much of an infrastructure to deal humanely with stray animals.  Stray dogs are not seen and I’d rather not think of what happens to them.  But there are many stray cats, some living in my walled-in apartment complex, and many others living in the Shuangxiu Park where I sometimes go for my morning run. 

At first I found it so piteous, and still do to some extent.  But then I’ve started seeing older, retired ladies with small red tote bags and plastic bowls and bags of cat food.  Feeding the cats, morning and afternoon.   Sitting with the cats affectionately on their laps.  These women are likely on very limited incomes, having had most of their working lives before the opportunities of the market really came to China.  Yet, there they are in the park, feeding the cats.

So, “good as gold.”  Or goodness vs. gold?   Better than gold, actually.  Much, much better.