Chinese unemployment rate is officially listed at 4% and unofficially at 13%. I can take a guess at what that means. Even still, with 1.3 billion people, it doesn't take a math major to realize that at either of those figures, there are a lot of jobs to go around. Here are some:
1. Elevator attendant - there are several people, including some in my apartment building, whose main job seems to be to take care of buildings, janitorial style. However every so often, I notice that they'll just stand by the elevator and try to be active. This includes pressing the up button when they hear someone coming, and holding the elevator open when it arrives. I think this may save the average individual about 1.8 seconds, and create an average of 10.3 seconds of awkwardness while the individual waits for the elevator alongside the attendant, who is patiently pretending she has a job.
2. Mall serenader - a few weeks ago, my dad and his friends took me to a Japanese restaurant in some high end mall. On our way out, taking the escalators down, we were serenaded at every level by 4 young-ish women standing on both sides of the escalator. They would bow when we landed and say a phrase in Chinese that meant something like, "Honored guest, please return sometime." I managed to constrain my laughter with extreme difficulty - their situation was simply comical. These women surrounded the escalators of like 4 levels as well as all the mall entrances. That's at least 32 people on the mall's payroll that appear meek as a living. Eh, there are worst jobs.
3. Plastic bottle collectors - this is technically not a job. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this on the blog before, but many old people collect plastic bottles in order to recycle them back for cash. This makes about a nickel in the US and I can't imagine that the price is significantly higher here in China so you can imagine how hard these people must work to buy dinner. At the Forbidden City, a women came up to me and asked for my bottle of water. When I replied that it still had water in it, she made me chug it and then took it. When playing basketball at Tsinghua University, an old man would watch the action then come collect the inevitable scattered plastic bottles.
4. Bathroom massager - by far the scariest and most awkward of all the jobs. In China Doll, a classy club in San Li Tunr, I had to take a leak and found 2 bathroom attendants inside. I've seen bathroom attendants before - in Hong Kong - and while certainly useless and awkward, they hadn't prepared me for this dude. As I take my place by the urinal, he comes up behind me and starts massaging my shoulders. It is NOT comfortable, and does NOT help me pee. After I'm done, shake him off, he turns the faucet on, waits for me to wash my hands, brings the soap to me, and does a sort of half-bow while presenting me with a paper towel. Amazingly there was a bowl for tips there filled with 20s. I threw a 5 in and ran away.
5. Umbrella seller - amazingly, when it rains, these guys just materialize. They sell nothing besides 10 kuai umbrellas and are nowhere to be seen on a sunny day. But when it pours, these guys are more popular than hot dog vendors at Fenway Park, or Barack Obama in Berlin.
6. Police officer - yes this is not exactly a useless job, until you realize how many there are in Beijing now. With the Olympics around, officers are everywhere important and several places that are decidedly unimportant. The Bei Da campus' many entrances are all guarded by armed security dressed in the intimidating dark green uniforms of the Chinese police. To enter the campus, you need to flash your Chinese student ID, and even then you might get a second look and a patdown. For me, I needed to be signed in by a student, give them an ID and fill out like 6 categories in Chinese, 2 of which I recognized (i faked some characters for the other 4). I gave them my Hong Kong ID cause it had my Chinese name on it so I don't know how they'd react to an American ID (I doubt it's a big difference). All in all, it's a lot harder to get into this campus than it is to sneak into LXR and it's all because there will be some ping pong events held in the gymnasium in 3 weeks time. I heard a rumor that some athletes are also staying there already, which might make the security seem more sensible, but overall the abundance of cops really indicates the paranoia that the Chinese government is feeling towards these games. More on that later.
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