On my way to
Lyon, France/Carlos Pueblo
Finally, I
left Istanbul, Turkey and was on my way to Lyon, France via
Frankfurt
International and Heathrow Airport, London. It was Turkey
Airway and
British Airway in combined. At Frankfurt waiting for the
flight, I
met 4 passengers and had a good conversation.
I was
waiting in a gate for flights to Shanghai, London, and Moscow
while I
first ran into a man from my hometown at Yunlin, Taiwan. He
used to grow
up in a village about 3 miles from me yet couldn’t recognize
all the
names which I brought up from his township. He proudly announced
that he only
had had elemental school education. He didn’t answer my question
what brought
him to Germany. He did make it in Germany as a restaurant owner.
He estimated
his asset of two houses, one in Frankfurt and another one in Shanghai
, for above
two million Euro and gained my respect. This is why he travels back to
Asia every
year, Shanghai and Taiwan.
Another
couple from Shanghai joined us for conversation. They were in Germany
to visit their
son who was in Stuggart for graduate study in engineering. Stuggart is
the
headquarter of Mercedes-Benz and that is why his son selects the study. I asked
about the
ownership of property in China and he didn’t have enough time to explain
how that worked
when the government required the land to build a new infrastructure
in Shanghai
for instance, how to procure and resale the property. He did mention that
some farmers
were making a fortune when sold their farms to the government. I thought
that the
communist regime owns all the land, all land in China. Very soon, they left for
their
destination.
The fourth
man was another Chinese passenger waiting for a plane to go back to his
hometown Hefei,
Anhei, China. If I was not mistaken, he should fly to Shanghai and
transfer to
Heifei. He took a different route via Moscow, Russia to make the transfer.
He was a manual
laborer in Trinidad and Tobago for new residential construction. His
Chinese
employer obtains a building contract with a local builder to build a public
housing project,
as a matter of fact, he was a labor of a subcontractor. He said that
his
employers, a Chinese couple, recruited him in China for a term of contract for
a list
of duration,
pay, and airplane ticket etc., yet he felt that he was lucky to get off that
job
after 18
months with a pity of the owner’s wife. He worked like a slave with a vivid
description.
I didn’t know how to comfort him. The slave system in Chinese society is
still
existed as I understand that the system in history still affect all the world’s
poverty
in fact, no
matter how much progress a nation is to be.
