beautiful feet?

[from the week of January 10th - Li Jiang, Yunnan]:

In China, shoes take a beating. Here, the main mode of transportation is walking combined with public transit and from the least to the greatest, everyone seems to need shoe repair at some point or another. As was the case with my "New Balance Clones" I bought back in Beijing in August. [Since January 4th, I have been travelling China for "Spring Festival" with some brothers and am now in Thailand for the ELIC's 30th Anniversary Annual Thailand Conference as I write this] After two days of hiking and almost six months of walking through China and having visited and walked through almost six different Chinese cities (Xi'an in Shaanxi Province, Chengdu, Le Shan, and Mt. Emei in Sichuan Province, and Li Jiang and Kunming in Yunnan Province) my right shoe was ready to tear in two. So, after learning how to say "repair" in Chinese, I could piece together: "where can [one] repair this?" while pointing at my shoe. Eventually, I was directed to a lady that repaired shoes on a small street corner/intersection. I arrived and repeated the same "can [you] repair this?" pointing at my shoe. After saying a few things to me that I didn't understand, I simply responded "I don't understand. I'm sorry. My spoken Chinese is not good. It doesn't matter. You know..." implying I understood she was probably asking me what I wanted done, I didn't know how to respond, and was conceding to her expertise in the matter.

As I watched her work her magic, I was fascinated with her ability as I had never seen shoe repair before, and was wondering how she would fix my battered shoe. She wasn't too keen on photos but I was able to snap a couple with a travel buddy's borrowed camera. She had finished and when she named her price, I immediately knew she was giving me the "foreigner discount" of about 200-250% [increase] but instead of bargaining, opted to "support the local economy" by being a little more generous with what I had been provided.

Because of the amount of travel and use and the things you trudge through, feet (esp. shoes) are considered much more unclean here (hence the taking off shoes at the door and putting on slippers, etc.). As I thought of the lady's life, I imagined shoe repair and cleaning would be a daily humbling experience (where you essentially handle one of the dirtiest articles of clothing we have). In this respect, Chinese/Southeast Asian culture is more similar to ancient Middle-Eastern culture than our own. This entire experience reminded me of a Truth that is a continual reminder to me here: "How beautiful are the feet of those who teach the good news of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things!" This means even the lowest, most unclean part of our bodies are deemed beautiful when we use them to carry the good news to others! And it seems that after my cultural experiences here thus far, the Chinese might understand this concept even better than we do.