The DJ was a bit eclectic. After playing about an hour of euro-house for “big fish/little fish dancing” (what you’re supposed to do with your hands when dancing to house apparently), he played “Sexy Back” which got me all pumped up. And then he played “Mr. Wendell” by Arrested Development. I hadn’t heard the song in years, but I was rapping along with the entire song while everyone stood to the side wondering what the heck we were listening to. The song itself tells a story about how the protagonist likes to get advice from a homeless man who goes by Mr. Wendell. The song has always resonated with me, and it was odd to hear it in a trendy night club in China, but it was weirdly prescient.

Afterwards, we all went downstairs to leave, and I stood outside smoking in the rain, which is practically why cigarettes were invented in the first place. While talking to a female friend, as usual, a woman approached me asking me to “mai huar,” which means to buy flowers. In Beijing, a lot of vendors wait outside of clubs trying to sell overpriced things to drunken people. Of course, I had no intention of buying flowers for anyone, let alone a dead rose for 10 kwai. But once my friend walked back inside, I started talking to the “mai huar” lady. I have an odd habit of asking Chinese people their life stories when I”m drunk. I always find their answers fascinating.

First she asked if I was Korean. I get that a lot, because I look Asian, but my accent is a little funny sounding. I teased her and eventually explained my background. I asked her where she was from because most of the street vendors in Beijing are actually migrant workers from other cities.

She has two kids, one 15 and one 12. They live in Henan with her parents and are in the same grade. She hasn’t seen them in two years. Her and her husband rent a small living space for 400 kwai a month (about 50 US Dollars), and she pays the rent by buying flowers in bulk in the morning, wrapping them in cellophane, dethorning them and selling them outside of night clubs. Her husband has a very bad heart disease and can no longer work, but they can’t afford take him to the hospital. She stays outside of the nightclubs every night until the sun rises and then walks home. Sometimes she can sell maybe four or five, which will be a decent enough night. Lately, Chinese people have been buying more than the foreigners.

After hearing a Chinese person’s story, I usually like to give them some money. I know that sounds really messed up, but I just like knowing that someone is a person—that they have a life and a history that resonates in a place that I am unconscious of. While she was talking, I figured that I would give her 10 kwai, but then she said something that just made me shatter inside, “life is so cruel, it’s better to be dead. If not for my kids, I would have been dead long ago.” And then she started crying, and then brushed away her tears and acted like it was the rain.

I felt horrible. I felt absolutely sick to my stomach. Everything that I deal with on a day to day basis seems so inconsequential in comparison. It was heartbreaking to have a middle aged woman cry in front of me, saying that she wishes she were dead.

And now I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t stop thinking about the inequity of life, how there will always be haves and have notes. I felt incredibly guilty that my life has been so fortunate. I’ve never had to worry about where my next meal is going to come from. Not everything is perfect, but my life is relatively easy compared to those who have to work hard just so they can send their kids some money in a province thousands of miles away. The history of humanity seems to contain so much misery, and my mind is always preoccupied with the mundane minutiae of a middle-class American life. I just felt so absolutely disgusted with myself. And more than anything else, I felt guilty for not being happy. It’s like a slap in the face to those who are less fortunate than I am when I feel that my life is not satisfactory. Every complaint, every slight, every misfortune seems like a mole hill in the face of the mountain of human misery.

And now I can’t sleep.

I know there aren’t easy answers to such difficult questions, but I really hope that I can live my life in a way that makes other people’s lives better. That I can somehow measure up, or even deserve, all of the wonderful things that have been given to me in my life.

I bought all of her flowers and sent her home for the night. It’s not in my budget, but I figured I could easily skip out on 100 kwai worth of food and booze—a ridiculously easy sacrifice. I hope that she’s sleeping right now, instead of waiting outside of a nightclub hoping some inebriated young man wanting to get some will “mai huar.”

After I gave her the money, she tried to give all of the flowers to the girls we were hanging out with. Everyone brushed the flowers aside because they are in fact, rather ugly and totally pointless. So we left the flowers sitting on a table. Imagining those forgotten roses sitting on a gaudy plastic tabletop underneath fluorescent lights encapsulates how I feel. Pretty soon, someone will walk by and throw them in the trash–all of her hard work, bundled up in cellophane, the hope for a better future for her kids who won’t have to basically beg people for money, lying in a heap ignored and forgotten by people like me. They are overpriced and ugly anyway.

-Jason