Won't you be my neighbor?

These folks live across the street from us.



In fact, there's a whole neighborhood of these houses across the way, lining the pathway to the village nearby. This is the kind of thing that foreigners like me are startled by -- the extremes that coexist side by side. I live in a gated compound. It looks like a resort hotel. These houses make Loretta Lynn's childhood home look like a tidy suburban residence. And we're only separated by a tiny strip of concrete.

In the U.S. we have our own share of poverty (which is one the rise). My old neighborhood in CNY was a case in point. But it was segregated from the "nicer" parts of the city, even if only by a block or two. And that seems to me to be the main difference. Here, there's a lot less segregation (although I suspect that that will change now that cars are becoming more popular here. The wealthy can live further away, can flee the scene). Poverty here very visible here.

It's not just the people that suffer poverty here; other animals do, too. There are lots of stray dogs and cats around, especially in the village. I saw the saddest puppy the other day, a little black doggie huddled against a filthy building trying to keep out of the rain. It was missing a bit of fur and it looked like nobody loved it. It was difficult to resist my first impulse: to scoop it up and take it home and introducing it to Jameson.

Some of my readers will be relieved to know that the stray dogs leave people alone. In general, they don't approach you or bark at you or chase you or anything. Today, though, a dog fight broke out about 10 feet away from me as I was walking on the path to the village. 3 dogs started fighting with each other and then 4 or 5 more dogs came running from who knows where to join in on the festivities. Instead of vacating my bowels and screaming in terror (my normal reaction), I just calmly walked by, pretending that nothing was happening (I made sure to keep my umbrella handy, though). I even managed to snap a picture of the "loser" as he ran away. You can see his hind end peeking out from behind the wall.