Yes, Andrew, Eric, and I spent a whole afternoon chatting with food deliverers around the Xinzhongguan Mall, which is also a collaborative interview project.
This photo was taken in the subway station. (You may wonder what's the flower for. Well, Andrew bought this bunch of flowers in the station for his mother.) You may wonder why there is not a photo including the deliverers. The fact is that, though we got permission to record videos, many of the deliverers do not prefer to be posted anywhere online. I firmly believe that respecting the people is the primary rule of any social research. So whenever I watch the so-called "documentaries" of the so-called "underprivileged" people, I start to worry whether the filmmakers got every person's permission.
On Xiaohongshu, I remember a photo of an old lady sleeping under a bridge. I believe that the user who posted the photo intended for the good, as she indeed called for attention to the housing issue. Yet I wonder if the lady agreed with the user to take a photo of her sleeping and post it on social media. The answer is mostly likely going to be NO: most people do not like others to take a photos of them without them noticing. And I regard such behavior as a disrespect of human dignity.
One thing that I believe to be true is that we really have to stop "pitying" others. Helping others should be based on respect: that is, we really treat others who are as clever, as complex, and as independent as we are.
(*Notice: some people suggest that we should quit "underprivileged" or "minority". But I do not think this is reasonable, since if a word is describing the fact that some people are treated unequally, then it should not be abolished. These two words I think by nature do not contain a sense of privilege. Avoid mentioning these words will only cover up the pre-existing unfairness and unbalanced resource allocation, which only aggravates the problem.)
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