How We Worship at the Feet of the Ancestors

Here's what I think I read in the paper this morning: Two Chinese women, in their eighties, living in China, were evicted from their home five or six years ago. They recently petitioned the local authorities for the right to demonstrate during the Olympics, to call attention to their homeless plight. They went to the police station five times. Rather than permission to protest, they have now been sentenced to serve time in a reeducation camp, along with other social maladroits, like prostitutes. One of the old women is almost blind. What do you suppose she will be reeducated to do?

Here's what else: There is one women-only homeless shelter in San Francisco. It costs slightly over a million dollars a year to run and houses up to 50 women, mostly elderly. It is being closed for lack of funds. An attempt is being made to rehouse the women. One of the preferred ways seems to be sending them out of county. This could very well mean putting them on a Greyhound with a one-way ticket to South Dakota. Instead of frail, elderly women, the facility will now house the medically frail when they get kicked out of the hospitals after their ultra-brief Medicare or MediCal authorized stays. Do you imagine there is no other walled and roofed structure in SF where medically frail poor people could be offered rehabilitative care? Do you think it's all about money and the relative juice of any helpless population? Bingo!

Does anyone else remember reading, as a kid, about how the Chinese venerated their ancestors? Is reeducation the new honor?