Life on the streets

It's around dinnertime on a Friday night and Yang Zailing stands at an intersection near Sanlitun, Chaoyang district, waiting for the traffic lights to turn red.

He wears a black hat, a wool mask covering his mouth and a long jacket. He has only a right arm and limps as he walks toward the queued cars in the unrelenting winter wind. A sign hangs around his neck with a rope, reading, "My children don't have money to go to school."

As the lights turns red, Yang holds up a feather duster with his hand and cleans the windshields of the cars that stopped there. Once in a while a window cracks open and a driver slips him a one-yuan bill ($0.16).

Come nightfall, Yang retires to a spot in a nearby underpass.

There are many homeless people in Beijing with stories like Yang's. They came from all over China and survive by picking trash or begging. Though there are government-funded shelters, many choose to stay on the streets because they don't want to be sent back to the cities they came from.

No country for an old man

Yang, 44, came to Beijing from Southwest China's Guizhou Province a month ago. He was a farmer back home and has three children about to go to college.

"I can't go back home. I'm making money here," he said Yang makes about 100 yuan a day wiping down car windshields.

Without a warm home to return to after a workday, vagrant Beijingers seek refuge in underpasses, as Yang does, or in underground passageways and train stations.

Beijing Railway Station's waiting hall is another spot where homeless people find shelter. One man, who refused to give his name, said he was a farmer in Central China's Henan Province and came to Beijing 15 years ago to make money, leaving the farmland behind to his family.

He was dressed in a thick overcoat with the hood pulled down to his forehead. Next to him sat a plastic sack, containing a few Beijing maps.

"I make money selling the maps," he said. "I make about 30 to 50 yuan a day. That's not enough to rent an apartment."

He said that he has always slept at the waiting hall at night. If the workers at the train station tried to kick him out, he would just come back again, he said.

"There are many people [like me] in the station, both here and out there [on the square]," he said.

Help offered

In 2003, the State Council issued a policy on rescuing the homeless and beggars in the city. According to the document, when police and other government officials find homeless people and beggars, they have to inform the shelters and persuade the homeless people to go there.

The policy also states the shelters should encourage the homeless to go back to their original city or workplace. For those with an identified address, the shelter is supposed to inform relatives of the person's whereabouts; for those without an address, the responsibility falls to the government where his or her hukou, or household registration permit, lies.

Liu Jianguo, a worker from the homeless shelter in Huairou district, said the shelter gets cooperation from towns and neighborhood bureaus as well.

"Our workers go out to look for homeless people twice a day, once in the morning, and once in the afternoon. But we are understaffed right now," he said.

If a homeless person stays at the shelter for longer than two months, the shelter contacts the Beijing office of the person's province to move the person.

"It's impossible to provide help forever," he said.

Reluctant to go

This method doesn't necessarily work.

"Many homeless people are not willing to come [to the shelter]," Liu said. "They don't want to go home. The shelter has rooms, food and water, and yet they just won't come."

The shelter provides free resources and help, but if the homeless people won't come, the workers can't force them, Liu said.

"Shelters are only helping on the surface. It's not real help. Once the homeless people get inside, they lose their freedom. Who would want to go?" said Zhou Xiaozheng, a sociology professor from Renmin University. "Besides, considering the number of homeless people, shelters can't help all of them."

Both Yang and the anonymous man at the train station said they didn't want to go to the shelter.

"They only give me food, not money," Yang said. "The shelters are all run by mafias," said the man at the train station, though he had no proof. "Besides, they can provide me with food, but they can't help me forever."

Zhou said that is indeed the problem with shelters.

"[The homeless people] don't believe in the government anymore. The problem can only be solved from its roots," Zhou said. "Why are they homeless? If the government doesn't solve land issues or housing price issues, however the shelter helps the homeless, it only scratches the surface."