An ode to the road sweeper lady

We're waiting in Guilin Airport for our final internal flight, to Shanghai. Perhaps it's because the humidity is now verging on oppressive, or that we've been on the road (or in the air) for more than 3 weeks, or the annoying and completely inept guide who has trailed behind us for the last 4 days, but our stamina is beginning to deteriorate. However, as we rest our weary limbs in the departure lounge I spare a thought for the road sweeper lady. Let me explain...

Whilst China is a very big and divers country wherever we go one thing remains consistent. A lady, probably in her mid-sixties (although given the toughness of her life she might be younger), is sure to be found on every road in every city we have visited in China. I will concede that it might not be the same lady but I like to think she simply follows us around sweeping dust wherever we go. She wears a traditional conical hat, a reflective jacket and carries around a long twig with a bunch of smaller twigs attached roughly to the end. She spends her days wearily wandering round Chinas highways pushing dust along the road. Her purpose is mostly a mystery. She doesn't seem to achieve anything. In Beijing and Jinan I assumed that the road sweeper must be participating in a form of euthanasia in what I'm convinced, given Chinese traffic, is the most dangerous job on earth. But even along country roads the lady toils brushing dust along tracks which are essentially only made of dust.

Next time I get tired at work I'll think of the road sweeper lady. Next time I think of the great and seemingly impossible achievements of Chinese guts and determination I won't think of the Great Wall of China but of the lady who, alone, sweeps the highways of one of the biggest countries on earth armed with nothing more than a twig and conical hat.