Security

This afternoon Myles and I were walking down the street with one of my friends from the Chinese parish. We ran into another friend of mine, Hai Xia, who is definitely not one of my church friends. I introduced them, talked to Hai Xia for a minute, and then we parted company. It was clear that Hai Xia was headed to her house in the gated community. My church-friend asked me where Hai Xia worked, and the answer was that she didn't. Once upon a time Hai Xia briefly worked in a bar, but has cohabitated with a series of foreign men that have supported her ever since. I think my church-friend suspected something like that, but was asking me out of politeness or maybe because she was surprised I would know someone like that. She thought it was funny that Hai Xia lived in a nice villa and I lived in a small apartment in a mostly Chinese building. She mentioned that she, too, had friends that used to work in "those bars" and now just lived with foreign men as their only means of support. She then said that she preferred to work. She doesn't have as much as those other friends of hers, but she always knew where her money was and how much money she had. That's better she said.
When I was telling this story to Randy later, which of course included the extreme contrast in Sunday-afternoon attire (Hai Xia was wearing a transparent black lace t-shirt and the other woman was dressed for church), he noted something funny about some of the women we know here. One chicken bar owner told Randy once that the girls that worked for her weren't necessarily looking for a rich man, or a man just to buy them some nice things and give them money for a while. What she said they were looking for was security from these (mostly) foreign men that frequent the chicken bars. Randy contrasted that statement with that of my church friend.
"Who really has security?" he asked.