The little match boy in my hometown
Yesterday on the 1st day of the Lunar New Year, I was getting to sleep and suddenly woke out of bed as I recalled the story of the “little match” boys and girls like in Christian Andersen’s fairytale, right in front of my eyes and in my neighborhood. Something began to dawn on me. I turned my laptop on to finish the 2nd chapter of UPEACE’s course — How to become a social entrepreneur that I have deferred during the whole month.
The little match boy, I have met boys and girls like them everywhere on the road, on the bus, and in my parents’ food vendor during peak hours. They were holding a bunch of toothpicks, chewing gum, and ballon pens, going around and pestering for bystanders to buy some. They have structures, strategies, specialized markets, scripts, and KPIs. They are run by a so-called profitable business that adults often joke about when you have nothing but the pitiful outlook camouflaged with disabilities to monetize from other well-being’s benevolence.
Those are what people assume, and those are valid points. A few years ago I managed to devise a script to exempt myself from these boys and girls as they approach me, and it works all the time. I always told them that I had bought some from their previous mates, and was out of capacity for now. That’s it, no big deal, no guilt from my side, no pestering from their side.
The only thing that lingered in my mind was the behind-the-scenes. Who are behind them, which structure runs them, what are their KPIs for days. Not to mention, where do they live, who are their parents, and why were they born in the first place. The 7 or 8 something started their life in somewhere like a concentration camp in the suburbs, forced upon doing the first sales job in their life as making constant pleas from adults. I guess their unique selling points are their young age and naivety, which their overarching “business owner” somehow managed to preach these values gracefully enough to imbed them in the little match boy’s mind. They did it, manifested in their smooth, flexible, and adept approaches to brothers/sisters/men/women respectively. Were they even mournful about their starting points? I guess not all the time. I talked to some of the “senior” little match boys in the crew as they frequently visited my parents’ food vendor during 9–10 pm, knowing this crowded place was one of their lucrative markets. Their happiness would be achieving the KPIs, asking my parents for some food surplus for dinner, and going to bed with a full stomach, knowing the next day would be sunshine and different customers coming with the same benevolence, and they are rewarded for good performance.
Although I truly believe that every being is born with a different purpose, and there is no such job superior to others as we all serve a machine governing society, I am not quite satisfied with the answer that the little match boys were born to do a kind of job being “pestering others’ benevolence”. Perhaps we have been too irresponsible sometimes to take advantage of these kids as an outlet for our goodwill, fast, cheap, and convenient. Perhaps that’s how a need was born and demand matched supply.
That said, was the answer to why the job was born, not why the little match boys were born. Given that kids were born with unique talents that they gonna give the world, after all, I rather doubted. When I was born, I was a powerless kid like them until my parents’ education added up my value and independence. I together with my mother slept in a concentration camp with blue-collar male workers when going to Hanoi for medical check-ups back in the 2000s, until some people noticed they had to treat me with better care in 5-star hotels and study on a state-of-the-art campus (not to mention this always comes with certain responsibilities and tradeoffs)
In fact, the answer is simple. I had the chance to know a freelance builders gang in my village, and my grandfather told me that some of the little match boys were born out of one-night stands between the builders and their (female) construction assistants. They lead a shepherd life, travel across provinces to build houses and infrastructure, no time for a settled school for their kids. While some of the little match boys were fortunate enough to be sent back to their parents’ hometown for schooling under their grandparent’s upbringing, some became nomads with their parents and earned a living “with their own ability”— young, naivety, and foolish. That’s how life is born.
I do not wish but I believe positivity can arise from any impoverished land with the growing minds of its people, just like the way I made it from the “concentration camp” till today. There is nothing ashamed about spending childhood as “the little match boys”, learning about “business” somehow, and growing up being an entrepreneur, writing their own fairytales. I guess that’s the so-called life ultimate journey of “finding yourself” and “becoming the best version of yourself”.
Well, I just wonder what can I do to become part of the little match boy’s journey to find their own purpose out of their parents’ one-night stand, out of all nights pestering others’ benevolence. After all, it would happen anyway, so why not seize the chance to become part of the solution? That’s what woke me up after procrastination (aka a good break) for learning and ignited the adrenaline running through my blood after the workplace fatigue, relationship complexity, and uncertainties about the future. I am forever grateful for the little match boys’ stories, and I strongly believe I am in no position to treat them with inferiority and pity. Ultimately, I made a promise to myself that with all my future endeavors, I shall do something that contributes to the well-being of my people, and one day I wake up smiling that the little match boy and his parents have been taken good care of, wherever they come from.
