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City street vendors under attack
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广告招租，e-mail:yesize@hotmail.com The most touching and sad image stored in my mind for many years has been the face of a weeping farmer, whose small food stand along with its tables and chairs was confiscated by governmental officials of the Industrial and Commerce Bureau. She was crying and begging on behalf of her staff on a street in Pudong during a cold winter. The stall was probably the sole basis of her livelihood in Shanghai. Her cry was the sound of a person whose last hope had been destroyed. That was not the only time I witness such scenes. There were a lot of food vendors lined-up outside the school gates when I was in college and it was a great pleasure for us to enjoy a bowl of hot wonton or grilled chicken wings on cold nights (especially when compared to the dull food provided by the campus canteen). Such evening snacks have become an important part of my memories of college life. Many of my classmates still consider the chicken wings the best they have ever eaten, even after many years and visits to large numbers of good restaurants. Yet we found all the vendors had gone when we returned to our college recently. Each vendor was fined 50 yuan (US$6) in the regular inspections that took place while we were at the school and the size of the fines collected has kept increasing. We always said that the officials could have closed down the vendors if they had really wanted to, suspecting that what they really wanted was to levy the fines. Perhaps the toughest way of dealing with so called "illegal vendors" is to act in the fashion mentioned at the beginning of this article. But I still wonder: Is it necessary to annihilate all the vendors? Most street food evokes memories of the past, like wonton, noodles, buns soaked in mutton soup from the northern part of the country. We cannot find those original flavours in well-decorated modern restaurants. The question is: How should the municipal government manage them? We can understand the government position with its concern for sanitary streets, the city’s image and food safety. But rather than eliminate street vendors, is there an alternative? The government has a project called "4050" to help middle-aged laid-off workers find jobs, with a series of special measures to assist them. We could also provide small food vendors with such opportunities benefiting them and other citizens. Maybe we could issue them a specific certificate allowing them to conduct their business with regular sanitation inspections. Normally applying for a formal licence takes time and money that such vendors could not afford. They thus have to choose the "illegal" path. During the city’s "face-lifting" and construction process, we should not transform all roads into cold and hectic places. We need to retain interesting and heart-warming spots here and there. It is not only "hardware" - such as buildings and green spaces - that represent a city. Some "soft" aspects also help build a city’s personality to differentiate itself from that of other metropolises. As winter arrives, many of the city’s streets are filled with the aroma of baked sweet potatoes, a seasonal delicacy that we have eaten since childhood. One local media report recently said that the baked sweet potatoes sold along the road might have been cooked in barrels that once contained chemicals, persuading people not to eat them. The author advised readers to cook the potatoes at home in their microwaves. How could this compete for flavour with those sold on the street? It’s like comparing instant noodles with those cooked by an experienced chef. A sweet potato vendor denied the rumour anyway, saying his barrel had been used to contain edible oil and he had already used it for five years. This vendor earned just under 40 yuan (US$4.80) a day, but if he was unlucky he might be fined 50 yuan. Sometimes, the media should let us hear different voices, especially those of ordinary people struggling to make a modest income through hard work in a big city. Many dim sum items, such as the xiao long bao made and sold in Yuyuan Garden, have become famous, but they were once just another street food, provided by hard-working vendors who sold them to eager customers from stalls on the side of the road. By Lu Chang
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