"Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief . . .." There aren’t many beggars in Lanzhou. I’m not sure why. The ones I see are old but look healthy enough. They are most evident outside the Christian churches on Sundays. They insist they’re hungry, but if I’m with students or Chinese friends, they hustle me away, insisting that the beggars are frauds and I shouldn’t give them anything. I can never tell if this is practical advice or some uniform extension of my friends’ work ethic.

It has been unsettling to go to the prosperous eastern and southern cities and see beggars every day on the streets. They are far different from New York panhandlers. These are women, children, a few disabled men. Some beggars spread out the story of their plight, written on a large sheet of paper, on the sidewalk. It is easy to see that some stories are more compelling than others, to those who can read and understand them. Some stories draw crowds and generous outpourings of cash. I’m light years away from understanding how or why. My friend Andrew is trying to learn to read Chinese in part so he can read the stories. He asked some little beggar kids in Kunming where they are from and they said they came from Gansu (our province) twenty days ago! Migrants. No legitimate work. No school for the kids. We watched them live, day after day, on the pedestrian overpass near my hotel. Most days, they used the soft drink cups from the nearby Kentucky Fried Chicken (it’s everywhere in China) to collect coins.

I passed a couple with a dramatic visual display, but no handwritten story. The man was flat on his back on the sidewalk, swathed in blankets except for his head ( eyes closed) and his afflicted hand, wrapped in blanket right down to the wrist. His wife sat at his head, collecting money. The hand drew my attention. It was a lurid shade of red, with a small festering wound. But what struck me most was the long, tapered fingers and the graceful pose of the hand, thumb and index finger extended, the other three fingers gently curled. It looked for all the world like the hand of a store mannequin, painted with dime-store poster paints. I didn’t walk over and touch it; who would?

But it is impossible to doubt the authentic need of most of the people who received my pocket change. When small grubby hands reach out, I try to imagine how a mother feels, and what she says to her children when she sends them out to beg.