(An article written on Daily Mail by Elmira Tanatorova on 28th March, 2022)
Wei Jianguo, a man in his 60s, has been living at a Beijing airport for 14 years. He said he left home because his family told him to quit drinking and smoking. Mr Wei has a set up of his food, belongings, and sleeping bag in a waiting area.
Living with family can
be overbearing sometimes, and many may feel annoyed
and trapped by constant pestering.
For Wei Jianguo, a
Chinese man who is in his 60s, the solution has been
to move to Beijing
Capital International Airport, where he is
understood to have been living for 14 years now, so
that he can smoke and drink as much as he likes.
Mirroring Tom Hanks'
Viktor Navorsk in the 2004 movie The Terminal -
where a tourist is forced to live at JFK airport -
Mr Wei has a set up of his food, belongings, and
sleeping bag in a waiting area.
He said he won't return home because
then, he'll be forced to quit drinking and smoking - a habit he
supplies with his monthly government allowance.
In 2018 he told China
Daily: 'I can't go back home
because I have no freedom there.
'My family told me if I wanted to
stay, I had to quit smoking and drinking.
If I couldn't do that, I had to give
them all my monthly government allowance of 1,000 yuan (£119.43).
But then how would I buy my cigarettes and alcohol?'
Mr Wei's home is in Wangjing, around
12 miles away from the airport. He moved in 2008, and had settled
at Terminal 2, which is 'the warmest' but has previously told Pear
Video that he sometimes visits Terminal 3.
He began sleeping at railway stations
and the airport after falling out with his family.
While he goes out if he needs to do any
shopping, he doesn't like to leave the airport because he 'won't
get cold here', Mr Wei told Pear Video.
Mr Wei said he won't return home because
then, he'll be forced to quit drinking and smoking - a habit he
supplies with his monthly government allowance
The man has said that he'd given up
looking for work, and was let go from a job where he worked at
an internal combustion engine factory in his 40s for being 'too
old'.
While he goes out if he needs to do
any shopping, he doesn't like to leave the airport because he
'won't get cold' that way', Mr Wei told Pear Video.
The outlet also talked to staff at
the airport, who said Mr Wei is harmless, albeit being a loud
drunk.
One worker said that Mr Wei had been
encouraged to leave a few times, but 'every time we mentioned it
he was drunk and lost his temper'.
He added that the airport dweller
doesn't bother other passengers and - with the terminals being
warm - doesn't 'freeze' in the Shunyi Disctrict's cold winters,
in which temperatures can plunge as low as -13C(8.6F).
According to China
Daily, Mr Wei is not the airport's only resident, and in
2018 as many as six people were thought to be living like him -
with one man 'notorious' for blasting Chinese opera music from
his radio.
The world's most famous airport
dweller is Iranian Mehran Karimi Nasseri, who lived in the
Terminal One of the Paris Charles de Gaulle for a whopping 18
years - from 1988 until 2006 when he became hospitalised.
Refugee Mehran Karimi Nasseri, on
whom the 2004 film The Terminal is based on, was forced to take
up residence in the Parisian airport after being sent here, his
last port of departure, by the British authorities due to a
failure in seeking entry into Britain.
The French authority also refused
his entry, leaving him stuck in the terminal.
While 18 years is a long time,
Bayram Tepeli, from Turkey, spent a staggering 27 years
at Ataturk Airport, where he moved in 1991 due to problems with
his family, before it closed in 2019, according to Daily
Sabah.
Etiquetas: Cosas veredes
# posted by pues @ 6:26 p. m.
