“Professional Beggars” Eat at Five-Star Hotels and Shop at Cartier After Earning SGD$400 Per Day

Last Updated on 2017-04-10 , 8:40 am

Apparently “professional beggar” is now a thing you can add to your resume. A group of beggars in China are living the high life; feasting at five-star hotels and splurging at high-end luxury shops.

In a photo collage titled A Day’s Life of China’s Professional Beggar, a “family of beggars” were shown starting their day with fast-food hamburgers for breakfast, beef and beer for lunch, watermelon and popsicles for tea, and dinner at a fine dining restaurant in a five-star hotel.

After dinner, they visited a Cartier shop.

Cui Guanghua, a photographer, followed them around for a week in Zhengzhou, Central China’s Henan province. According to Cui, this is how they got away with it. Dressed in rags, a “sick” beggar would lie on the ground while his “sister” kowtowed to passers-by and begged for alms.

After a hard day’s work, he somehow recovered, stood up, and walked all the way to a fancy restaurant for a five-course meal.

 

And if you’re still unsure whether or not the “sick” beggar was putting up an act, Cui catches him in the process of topping up the “medicine” bottle – with none other than ice cold beer.

 

The group has around 10 members who work in shifts. They beg on streets, at parks, and along subway stations until 11pm, and reward themselves with an expensive dinner after. The next day, they exchange partners and employ a different ruse to deceive other sympathetic passers-by.

It was reported that they could earn between 2,000 and 3,000 yuan a day – that’s over SGD $400 conned. Sometimes, it really doesn’t pay to be kind.

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This article was first published on goodyfeed.com