Odd-job Bachelor

So long as it isn’t raining, 38-year-old Shanghainese bachelor Zhou Jianping gets up at dawn every Sunday and makes his way to the Confucius Temple and the weekly book fair. By 7.30am he has his stall set up and is ready to greet customers.

Zhou has been a book-and-scrap collector since 2000. Before that he worked as a store clerk, a handyman and a McDonald’s server. He lives in a large residential community on Shaanxi Nan Lu. In the French Concession’s heyday, it was known as Verdun Garden, but Zhou doesn’t have a fancy house, just a 20-sqm room stuffed to the brim with all his possessions – books, notebooks, a black-and-white TV, yellow manuscripts and old photos. There’s also a stack of pop cans and disposable plastic containers, which account for the bulk of Zhou’s livelihood.

Most mornings he parks his three-wheeler at the community entrance and waits for neighbors to come and give him their scraps. Sometimes he pays them a few kuai, others let him have the stuff for free. He separates it all into different boxes. If it’s an old book, antique photo or handwritten letter, he saves it for the Sunday book fair.

“People nowadays love to collect this weird stuff,” Zhou says at his market stall. “Look at this fellow beside me. He has a bigger stand and more books, but he makes less money, because he only sells regular books. Curiousity might be creating a bigger market than the thirst for knowledge.”

On the days he’s not at the fair, Zhou rides over to a recycling center in Xujiahui in the afternoon to sell his daily scrap collection. Between books and scraps, he earns anything between RMB1,000-10,000 per month. On a really good day at the book fair, he can make RMB3,000.

“I don’t care that much about money. What I earn is enough to keep me alive and happy,” Zhou says. He is different from his fellow book sellers. For one, he doesn’t go to the “ghost fair” – the book fair that starts at 3am, where sellers hawk their wares by flashlight (thus saving from having to pay a RMB50 stall fee).

“I don’t do it because I enjoy sunshine and chatting with my customers.” He explains. Zhou is ever ready to speak up and tell you what he thinks – he’s especially keen on politics and religion.

“Chinese people see recycling as a low, undignified occupation,” he says. “I often see women speaking to their children and pointing at me, ‘See him? If you don’t study hard enough, you will end up like him,’” says Zhou.

“I think this is why we aren’t doing recycling as well as other countries. We don’t have a system encouraging people to do it voluntarily and happily. The work is very important and requires somebody with responsibility, patience and care. I believe it is a very respectful occupation that I have devoted myself to.”