Chinese Peter Jenkins

There's a magazine/website for expats here called Go Chengdoo, a really useful source of information.  (There's also a website called Chengdu Living, the name of which gives me a slight brain hemorrhage.)  While I was looking for information on recycling and the municipal waste system (I like to cut loose after 8pm) I found this article, entitled  "the most handsome trash digger."

It's about a young man, currently in Chengdu, who makes his way around the country ("he's been able to travel to over 10 cities") by picking through the trash for recyclables.  This made a splash in the Chinese internet community, because most trash-pickers are very old, very poor country people.  His looks were compared favorably to the actor Tong Chun-Chung. 

Basically he's just a kid from the country who likes having a job where he walks around and gets to travel to new places.  His big goal is to save up 10,000 kuai so he can move to the QTP* and pick through trash there.  Which sounds pretty amazing, actually, considering he's funding his travels by recycling, and spends his whole day walking around (low carbon emissions) and doing what he wants.  In Chinese society "trash picking" is a pretty low kind of work, so perhaps he needs to be rebranded as an awareness-raising environmentalist and critic of new middle class values?

Here's a great, gushing quote from the article:

even that classic line from Stephen Chow's movie was used by netizens to describe his appearance: "A man man like you, just like fireflies in the dark, as bright as that, as numerous as that, you with your eyes so sullen, with the air of one breath you betray yourself."

*Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau