From NetEase:
59-year-old public sanitation drives a privately-owned car to go to work sweeping streets
White collar workers driving cars to work you’ve already seen plenty, but if I told you there are public sanitation workers who drive cars to work, would you believe me? Don’t be surprised, in Shenyang there is just such a public sanitation worker—with a well-off family, he drives a car worth over 80,000 RMB to commute to and from work,
The day before yesterday, just after 6:30, a silver Brilliance car stopped at the side of the road. An old man wearing a blue cap exited and put on an orange uniform printed with the words “Shenyang Public Sanitation” pulled out from the trunk.
This public sanitation worker is named Zhang Tiande, and has already done sanitation work for the Meijiang team of the Shenyang City Huanggu District Santaizi city management bureau for over a year.
Zhang Tiande is 59-years-old, and this year is his 34th year as a public sanitation worker. “At first I was driving for the Public Sanitation department, garbage truck, forklift I’ve driven them all.” Zhang Tiande says, the longer he drives something, the deeper his connection towards the vehicle.
3 minutes later, riding a 3-wheeled vehicle (tricycle) with cleaning tools, Zhang Tiande begins his morning cleaning.
“I raised buying this car after I started to do cleaning work [instead of driving]. Previously I drove another car, but felt the power and displacement were both inadequate.” A month earlier, Master Zhang spent 80,000 yuan to buy this silver Brilliance car.
Zhang Tiande is the first person to drive a car to work amongst those in the Santaizi city management bureau. The old man says his present income is over 2000 yuan, “my old woman does budgeting [as a job], and the two of us have a guaranteed monthly income of over 7000 yuan.”
“My living expenses with my old woman are not a lot, our children are also financially independent, we’ve saved several years of retirement money so buying a car and spending over 500 kuai every month on petrol is not that much [financial] pressure.” “If I were to go home, there would not be anything for me to do either. Actually, I have worked this job so long I have developed an emotional bond to it. and I’m not a person who can stay idle anyway.” Zhang Tiande says.
Shenyang Santaizi urban management bureau’s supervisor believes that Master Zhang buying a car for transportation is on one hand enthusiasm towards his work and on another hand demonstrates the old man’s healthy mentality/attitude.
Master Zhang’s coworker states, “Master Zhang’s car is like everyone’s car. Whenever someone needs to move something, Master Zhang will help transport it for them, never hesitating [to offer/help].”
Comments from NetEase:
zhongq.886:
Very niu.
扯–淡:
To put it nicely, it is enjoying one’s old age.
To put it not nicely, it is having nothing better to do.
Can this public sanitation worker’s position be given to someone who truly needs work? He drives a car, only because it is his interest/hobby, but he is still stripping a person who needs a job more than him of a job.
w1g3:
Forms a type of lifestyle, internalizes a type of emotion.
fyhyh:
Hope that all laobaixing [ordinary common people] under the sky can have money and leisure to be like that person [Zhang Tiande] enjoying doing what they personally enjoy, including driving the car they want to drive.
haier521s:
This is news? We here even have street-sweepers who drive Benz 350s.
非淋湿疣治疗:
Honestly, I don’t believe this. I am looking at this through the eyes of a laobaixing [ordinary common person], and the most basic/low-level public sanitation worker could not be this prosperous. If a person had money/was rich, who would go do this job? This is a hoax/hype/fake. I know our local street-sweeper only makes 500-600 to 700-800 a month. It is about enough to eat but buying a car is a joke!
Gamne一生:
This is the kind of good person who is enthusiastic about his work.
awencomeon:
What is commitment to work, what is dedication to work, what is loving the job you have, this is the model/good example.
凡事想开点:
If the children are successful and do not depend on the parents, and there are no major financial burdens in the home/family, the elderly should definitely enjoy their own work and life.
Good post!
huyuanyang12:
Him as a cleaner drives a car to go to and from work, whereas me as a salesman depends on my two legs to go to and from work.
sddzhyjchina:
A car is just a transportation tool, everyone should correct their mentality, having a car or not having a car doesn’t mean anything!
liqiliang200:
Almighty God, please give your blessing, let me go sweep streets too. Let me also buy a Brilliance car so I do not need to brave the elements…
卡斯罗罗:
The old man does not lack money, what he is playing is “loneliness”!
impky:
Hehe, anything is possible in China~~
dezdz:
[responding to 扯--淡]
To put it nicely, you are a fenqing [angry youth] who finds everyone disagreeable.
To put it not nicely, water has entered your brain [you are mentally handicapped].
An old person who has worked a job for decades and continues that job, what’s wrong with that? All he did was depend on many years of savings to buy a car. He has worked an entire life, he should be enjoying life. You only find it disagreeable because he drives a car to go sweep the floor. Does he have to walk several tens of kilometers to go to work before you’re happy? Does he have to suffer to arouse your sympathy before you feel it is fair? A public sanitation worker job is probably a humble/lowly job in your eyes, otherwise you wouldn’t find it so disagreeable that the old man can afford to drive a car. But by slandering and also treating a public sanitation job as if the pay is very good, [you make it seem like] the old man has stolen someone’s meal ticket. I really do not know what kind of water has entered your brain [do not understand your mentality].
This story became popular and spread on the internet a few days ago. However, I only finish translating it now. This evening, I also saw a news report of this man on the Shanghai Metro. It is a little silly. AOlesen
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First! Nigga please.
There is no way that is his car.
It’s just some guy messing around, getting out of his car and putting on the vest for the pictures.
And where does the cart come from? Does he pull it around like a trailer?
The carts are locked up in the same place where they work. Sometimes they have a shed/shack, and sometimes they are chained together by the wall.
Maybe this old gentleman treats his job as a sport. Many retired people in China would rather keep busy in doing something than staying idle. My mom was a professional school teacher and she had already passed the legal retirement age (50 for female) but she would rather continue teaching kids with half payment than retire and get full pension. Being busy is her lifestyle and she said it’s a good way to keep healthy.
I believe average Chinese seniors are among the group that pay more most attentions to physical and mental fitness in the world. See this article:
http://www.chinaonthemove.net/?p=1802
Americans should take note of the Chinese seniors’ passion for exercise. According to the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, only 32 percent of American senior citizens exercise on a daily basis. One of the main challenges for senior physical fitness is increasing that percentage, said C. Jessie Jones, co-director of the Center for Successful Aging at California State University, Fullerton, in an e-mail.
Aside from a few tai chi and dancing teachers in Chinese parks, there is a suspicious absence of one the staples of American physical fitness in the midst of all these elevated heart rates: the personal trainer. “There are a few coaches [who] work with seniors, but most of them just try out many different activities and then find the one that’s best for them.” Gu said.
In the US, however, the medicalization of exercise has impeded many American seniors’ physical fitness, said Jones. “We have made older adults in the US [who] think they need permission from their physician to exercise, and they need to go to a fitness center with a specialist,” said Jones. “That is our cultural way.”
So what is Gu’s advice for seniors in the US?
“Find an exercise you like, stick with it….and don’t be shy!”
Thats cause there was no wangba’s back then. Wait until the post 80s gens grow old. They’ll be the most decrepit on the planet; in their wheelchairs still snoozing over their w0w.
So is 80k RMB about 10k USD? And 7k RMB about 1k USD? Amirite?
you are right! To be hoenst, he has worked over 30yeras so I find it pretty normal for him to have a car. Chinese saves over 40% of their salary.
Btw, he stated that his and his wife monthly income are $1,000.00. A monthly income of $1,000.00 for a 59yo in China is pretty good.
Why is this so bloody amazing? Big deal. A janitor has a car. His kids are full grown…and he likely made this with stockmarket money. LOL.
I’m not that surprised. Honestly the netizens should notice how shamefully dissapointing the Chinese government is in that its a surprise that a janitor has a car.
This is the point socialism. Even street cleaners should have a car.
What a bunch of nosey parker, curtain-twitchers the Chinese are.
Mind your own fecking business, sheeple.
Can you imagine what petrol prices are going to be like when every Chinaman has a car? At least it will be funny to see the Chinese invade Muslim countries and take their oil.
PUSAN, I’m impressed, that comment wasn’t actually very inflammatory at all. Its rather truthful to the fate of gas-guzzling nations. Either that or they’re going to be sucking Muslims off left and right like the countries without military power do.
Yup, because the only reason we went into Iraq is oil. You’re a real winner.
No we went in for the EXISTANT, CIA-FACT CHECKED WMDs and to give the Iraqis freedom, just like the reason we support “Tibetan Freedom,” not because the USA wants to weaken China before it becomes a serious threat to American “interests.” Oh, and I’m sure that the reason China invests in Africa is because they feel such a “strong link of being oppressed by the imperialist West,” not because they see an opportunity to enjoy the same advantages that Western countries do in China or anything. Come on now, get your head out of your ass.
You seriously believe that Saddam Hussein dispatched niggahs to Niger just to strengthen relations? Do you even realize that absolutely no revenue from Iraq’s petroleum industry is spent on the rebuilding of Iraq or is given to the US?
Perhaps you’d enjoy a resurgent Iraq blatantly ignoring UN sanctions, allowing known terrorists to operate in Baghdad, and an absolutely totalitarian leadership to still pull the strings in Iraq?
Try using your brain once in a while, shitstain.
stop the presses
This constitutes a story? Guy has a job, probably pays decent, happens to own a car. Ok then.
Probably pays decent? I guess you’ve either never been to China, or have no idea about the reality of life there for ordinary people. This is not the kind of job that pays “decent” – quite the opposite in fact, which is why people find it remarkable that he should be able to afford a car and afford its monthly upkeep. My money is on his kids buying him the car or at least providing a large chunk of money for it.
and still, how does this constitute a story, again?
Because if you look at what chinaSMACK aims to do, it aims to translate popular things on the Chinese internet. This story is popular among Chinese netizens and therefore it appears on chinaSMACK. Pretty simple really. I don’t see why so many people have trouble grasping this simple fact especially since this has been chinaSMACK’s modus operandi since the beginning. If you don’t like it, no-one will care if you leave.
Well said. ChinaSMACK isn’t an actual news site yet people here think it is for some reason.
yeah, stop the presses, “a cleaning guy doesn’t have to be down and out on his luck” ?! whoa, this is the craziest shit I’ve ever heard.
Once again Chinasmack, you made me waste precious minutes. I’m off to Chinahush, Danwei, and others, so long suckers.
Damn, some of you guys are haters.
1. You guys DO know you’re on chinaSMACK right?
2. You DO remember that chinaSMACK generally seeks to translate and report whatever is ostensibly popular amongst Chinese netizens on the Chinese language internet, right?
3. Thank you for spending the time, space, and chinaSMACK’s server’s resources to tell us that this story doesn’t interest you personally.
4. Perhaps it would’ve been a better use of your time and energy to improve yourself by thinking about why such a story that YOU don’t think is interesting actually resonates with so many Chinese netizens. Undoubtedly, there are many Chinese netizens who ALSO don’t give a shit about this story, but maybe you’ll learn a thing or two by considering what possible reasons so many DO seem to give a shit.
Maybe they’re just bored and have nothing better to do (like you and I, except expressed in a different way), or maybe their interest and reaction to this story reveals something about social expectations and norms amongst Chinese in China.
“It’s news because people better than you said so.”
– Paul Carr
What is the big deal with having a car? A car for 40000RMB is damn cheap. Shit what is wrong with you guys?
my Ayi just bought a big apartment at 20s floor in the middle of the shanghai city, she invite me for the house warming party….. any surprise!!! some people really can save
Damn, I make more than that guy and I can’t afford a car!!! bullocks!
That guy probably doesn’t spend 50+% of his salary on beer and fast food.
why not? Hauling trash is lucrative. NY garbagemen make more money than hujintao. This story just proves that China has climbed yet another step toward development.
What the hell does a NY garbagemen’s pay have to do with his counterpart in china? You sir fail.
Hauling trash is NOT lucrative in China.
This is a simple case of supply and demand. In developed economies like the United States, there is a shortage of people who are willing to do these jobs, whereas no such shortage exist in China.
If everyone Chinese could afford a car, by that time, Far East Russia be pumping more oil and gas than the oil rich countries or taken over by China.
Sadly, not all Chinese will afford a car with the low wages and bosses skim on paying for the pension plans.
He must be saving every penny he can to save enough for the car. Or is he a rich guy with too much money and nothing else to do?
Is this that surprising? Its like people have forgotten about blood money. That if his wife or child died in a factory he might got a nice lump sump known as blood money. The blood money is used to tell him to STFU and not reveal that the factories are an unsafe place to work.
And so he bought the car to replace his love one.
Did you read the story?
lol
wdf u smokin? how bout when a story like that comes up. you can copy paste your say for that piece.
anyway, while he hops back into his car you can hop back onto your cloud. blood money hahaha!
brilliance hah! thats the anti-ad of the century
buy a chinese made car and u tooo cud look like a street sweeper
f- man i wudnt let him wash my car
And people in other countries live in their car because they are poor. See the connection?
The article says that his wife earns a good salary. This explains how they can afford the car.
i want to marry him and get his car