My heart goes out to poor misunderstood Xidan busker
By Earle Gale (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-08-12 09:40
 |
Large Medium Small |
I can't help but feel sorry for the "false poor man" who drew the scorn of netizens recently after he performed in the Xidan commercial area.
For those who missed the story, the young singer was busking his heart out while wearing a sign that read "I have no car, no home, just looking for real love".
The lovesick balladeer was doing well and had drawn quite a crowd when security guards approached him and ordered him to stop.
The 10-minute video of the episode posted online shows the mystery musician offering the guards the money he had collected and pleading with them to let him carry on singing about his feelings.
The guards were unyielding and made him leave.
And that's when the wheels came off for the man because he stalked off and got behind the wheel of a BMW SUV and drove off into Internet infamy.
Many who watched the performance live and who saw it online were furious, saying the performer cheating them because he claimed to be hard-up when he was not.
"I found it weird that he was performing to find love," said 24-year-old Yang Fan, a witness to the embarrassing spectacle.
"I thought he was looking for money, but I guess we all know he's not poor."
The singer also came in for criticism online, with many saying he was a disgrace and was basically cheating people out of their money.
His many opponents seem to be missing the point.
Firstly and most importantly; maybe he really does not have a home and a car. Maybe, he had borrowed the gleaming luxury car from a friend or family member. Maybe, he was everything he said he was.
But my support for him goes deeper.
While honesty is always the best policy, especially in relationships, surely it is more noble to pretend you have nothing in order to win the heart of another than it is to pretend you are more wealthy and successful than you really are.
Isn't our popular culture, both here in China and in the West, full of stories of princes pretending to be paupers falling in love with milk maids?
This young man, if he is rich, clearly wants to find a girl who loves him for who he is, not for what he has.
I, for one, have more respect for him than I would have for someone who buys a swanky car using borrowed money and lives in a high-end rented home, just so he can lure unsuspecting girls into his honey trap. Or for a man who earns 5,000 yuan a month and spends an entire year's salary on a wedding ring he can't afford, just to try to impress his money-loving fiance.
At a time when we are bombarded with television shows dripping with beautiful women clawing each other's eyes out just to get a date with a rich man, it's nice to see someone trying to land his perfect mate using his emotions and talent as bait instead of his swanky car.
In truth, few of us are exactly who we appear to be. Some of us like to appear more intelligent than we really are, or more stupid. Some of us pretend we have read books we have never opened or profess to having opinions we do not really subscribe to.
We are, all of us, complicated and conflicted mountains of DNA.
I've lost count of how many rich young Westerners I have known who have strapped on a backpack and grown a beard and long hair while trekking around the world on a shoestring budget, pretending to be wild, impoverished free spirits before returning home to take over the family dynasty or become stock-brokers.
Maybe it's got something to do with wanting to find out what life is really all about.
We all like to play a role sometimes and we all like to see how the other half lives.
In addition to looking for love - surely one of the noblest pursuits of the human species - this kid, you can be sure, if he was rich, simply wanted to find out what life was like as an impoverished street performer.
Having said all that, I do have one major criticism of the much maligned "false poor man". When the security guards pulled the plug on his playing, why, oh why, didn't he just pick up his guitar and take a walk around the block before climbing inside his luxury motor? That way, he would have left his audience with nothing but warm and fuzzy morning-after memories, instead of the dreaded feeling of being cheated.
