November 10, 2003	Monday	Ramazan 14, 1424

BEIJING: Under one of central Beijing’s busy freeways, a dozen people brave the capital’s freezing winter weather rolled up like sausages in dirty blankets or huddled behind “walls” made of plastic.

Some seek warmth over fires while others bury themselves inside pig-pen style enclosures built from scrap brick and cement blocks.

Homelessness was once rare in China — a country where the government is so obsessed with keeping track of people that everyone has a household residence permit specifying where they should live.

But in recent years as economic reforms deepen and the gap between rich and poor widens, a steady stream of the poor and miserable are flocking to big cities looking for work, free money or justice.

Many of them end up homeless.

The Chinese capital, for example, has seen its tunnels and freeway underpasses turned into campsites.

The heavily travelled underground passageway near one of Beijing’s upmarket department stores, Scitech, was last week dotted with beggars.

Two farmers from Henan province clanged tin cups as women dressed in fur-collar coats and men in suits briskly strode by.

“Hello, hello,” one farmer called out when he spotted a foreigner, assuming he must be rich.

“If you must sit here, you should sit by the wall,” an annoyed Beijing man barked.

“There are a lot of vagrants here nowadays. Sometimes there are more than 10 in this tunnel,” said Chen Xianjun, a city janitor.

“Some people can’t find any work. Some people don’t want to find work.”

Most vagrants come from the countryside.

“We can’t afford to send my grandson to school. My wife needs to see a doctor,” said one of the farmers, 67, surnamed Wang.

“The money we make from farming is barely enough to pay taxes.”

Other elders in his village also travel to Beijing regularly, making about 300 yuan (36 US dollars) each time to supplement their family annual income of only 1,000 yuan from growing corn and sweet potatoes.

“We don’t tell our children we beg. I tell my son I collect discarded bottles for recycling,” Wang said.—AFP