This term I have asked my PhD students to keep following news, both local, national and international, which we can then discuss in class. This concept has worked really well and almost all the students now come to class with a couple of stories they have prepared to be presented to the class.

Last week, a few of the news stories presented were related to something you can't avoid seeing in any city in China (...I assume based on all the places I have been to so far and the stories I have heard) : beggars. In Baoding, there really aren't all that many, but in some other places you will see beggard on every street corner. Disfigured children, smelly old men, or women in rags with babies. So how do you deal with this? Do you give them money?

The problem is that a lot of the begging is organised, and the money you give to that poor little kid will go straight to a rich old geezer, who practically uses these children as money-collecting slaves. One of the news stories reported how the police in Hangzhou have been putting extra effort into getting rid of the beggars in the city. In the story, they introduced the case of a young girl, who was picked up from the street and found to be working for a man, who had been putting her in the street every day for the past five years. Every day this man would cut the girl's ankles open to increase the sympathy points and thus her earnings. And if my students translated correctly, this girl was making some serious money.

Similarly, there are many stories of children being kidnapped and then used for begging, while disfiguring them in one way or another (like cutting their tendons etc). Or children are lured away from countryside families by promises of money for the whole family and a better life.

A different variation to the begging theme was offered last week by a story of an orphaned university student, who begged for 10 days over the winter holidays in order to be able to afford the tuition fees for this semester. And in that time he did indeed make enough money to pay the fees...

So the question remains, what do you do? Do you give to those children, which means you would probably be supporting some sad old loser who just exploits the kids? But surely some of these people do it out of a real need? How do you know which is which?

You tell me...