Resourceful Homeless Man Lives In Flood Pipe
For one homeless man in China, home is where the flood pipe is. Mao Li, aged 30, has lived in the pipe, which lies beside a bridge in Haikou, Hainan province, southern China, for a year.
Despite China’s rapid economic growth, the lack of proper government regulation and public awareness regarding environmental and social issues such as homelessness, have hindered China’s attempt to equalize economic prosperity with ecological health and social advancements.
Mao Li’s one bedroom apartment even has its own front door. Public authorities have intervened and are forcing him to evacuate only because they have decided that the front door to Mao’s very humble dwelling “lowers the tone of the area.”
The intervention has worked in his favor, but it seems almost an afterthought, as no one seemed to care where he lived until it was decided after a year that it didn’t look nice for him to live in a flood pipe.
Authorities are not heartless, and Mao will be given a new place to live.
“He will be taken care of and given a proper home. We are a modern city… We can’t have people living in pipes.”
In the end, one has to ask if this because of how things are or rather how they look?
Check out this video below concerning the plight of the homeless in China.
(Link)
By MDeeDubroff on 06-05-2011
