I have a story to tell (Patreon)

You know that as a Patreon of mine you are without doubt a very important person in my life, it's through your support that I get to continue this adventurous lifestyle of mine, I can go places and do things that I otherwise would not be afforded the time to do. So this leads me to my entaglement with a beggar lord! 

I am planning to shoot a video about it tomorrow, and I am gutted since in the heat of the moment I made an error and instead of filming the encounter, I actually turned off the camera when I thought I was turning it on and vice versa, basically I have no footage of the incident and so will have to relate the story to you.

Here in the South of China, quite a lot of tradition remains. It's no secret that religion and tradition were all but completely wiped out during the dark times of the cultural revolution and "great leap backward" that happened here not so long ago, however traditions did survive, unfortunately a lot of them were perverted and now only serve a selfish "pray for money and luck" purpose. Either way, throngs of people will converge on temples here in Guangdong province on the first day of Chinese New year to either "Pray for wealth, health and babies or husbands/wives", the trick is that it's not going to work unless you give an offering of money at the altar of whichever god or bhudda you want your selfish blessing from (there are a few), and it's pretty interesting to see people with fists full of 10 cent notes (since that's the lowest currency denomination) making hundreds of requests and increasing their chances of a payout by donating more. Well apparently if you do get your wish, then you have to come back and once again give money and say thank you to God XY or Z the following year or your good luck will change to bad etc, I think you get the point. So Sasha had to go and say thank you since it turns out a short while before she met me she had gone to request that she find a good husband at the temple, and since we had gotten married and she's happy, she had to go and say thank you. Chinese people are however incredibly tight when it comes to money (it's part of their culture, they love to save and won't give out money for a reason, unless it's to gain face).

I'm telling you all this because it has something very important to do with what happened next, you see, acts of charity (at least on that day) can increase your chances of whatever you prayed for coming true, and so, quite predictably as soon as you leave the temple, there is an entire street of beggers all lined up waiting to prey on all the temple goers.

Now to the story!

The crowds are large, there's quite a lot of crowd control going on with police and security guards dotted around the place to try and prevent blockages and stampedes and the like, but they completely ignore the beggars (probably due to prior arrangements with the beggar gangs).

China's beggar gangs are horrendous, they are truly despicable in nature and will stoop to incredible lows in order to get you to hand over your money, they rent children from poor families, purposefully disfigure people to gain sympathy etc etc, the list goes on (let's just say that if they all came to a grizzly end, I'd sleep better).

I noticed a particular group of beggars that really pissed me off, they had a young girl around 6 years old who they would physically push towards crowds of people coming out of the temple, then the little girl would get some money in her bowl, they had a fat ugly middle aged woman very close to her who would immidiately snatch the money out of her bowl to make it look like she had nothing, then violently shove her at the next crowd coming out of the temple, rinse and repeat.

I pulled out my camera and began to (at least I thought) film this disgusting behaviour, there was another middle aged man who was on the lookout and signalling to the middle aged woman handler which crowd to target next, and he spotted me filming and gave me the stink-eye, he went to fetch the beggar lord, a man who can only be described as a filthy old man with grubby hands, he shambled over to me, grabbed both my arms with his filthy mitts and demanded money from me, I told him in Chinese that I wasn't going to give him a cent, next he said, you're not allowed to take photos here, I said to him "nonsense it's a public area", he then said, yes it's a public area but only Chinese people can take photos, it is forbidden for foriegners to take photos, you're not allowed to take photos of us Chinese in our China, typical bullshit, so I called him out on it and said okay, let's go ask the police....

I physically dragged him (since he wouldn't let go of my arms) to two policemen who were nearby, as we apporached I shouted to them, "this guy says that I'm not allowed to take photos here because I'm not Chinese", the police said "take all the photos you want", the beggar lord got furious with the two officers and tried to convince them by saying bullshit like "He's a foreigner, he can't come here to our country and take photos in our country of our chinese people, them forigners only want to hurt our China" etc etc, I was getting pretty mad at this point and just asked the police again "so foreigners aren't allowed to take photos in China?" and they replied again "take as many photos as you want", the beggar lord at this point had released his filth grip on my arms and so I took it as my chance to leave (since there were probably other members of his gang skulking around), as I left he was still trying to convince the two completely uninterested police officers that I was a foreign bastard trying to invade China or something.

I walked away unscathed but without any footage but with a very bad taste in my mouth.

Never give money to beggars in China, that's the moral of the story, there isn't an honest one amongst the lot!

Thank you for reading all the way to the end,

As always, unlike the beggar lord... Stay Awesome!