Beijing took some heat in the press for sweeping its streets of the homeless before the Olympic circus came to town, but China's government isn't the only one trying to banish the disadvantaged from places where visitors tread.

According to the main Atlanta newspaper, the Journal-Constitution, cops have been trawling the streets this month dressed as tourists, hoping to catch panhandlers in the act of rustling up money. As of last week, 44 beggars have been arrested.

One of the police commanders in town explains that the frequency and intimidating style of local begging has gotten so bad that it's annoying tourists and scaring them away. And because most tourists who feel accosted by beggars don't return to town to testify, the city had to resort to using officers posing as tourists so that there would be someone around to tell it to the judge. The decoys are even rigged with hidden cameras.

Atlanta, which passed an ordinance three years ago that banned verbal panhandling in a restricted downtown area near the Georgia Aquarium, is far from the only city to place limits on begging. In the Peachtree City, beggars can usually get by silently holding a sign that asks for cash. But ask "aggressively" -- the interpretation, like the one for obscenity, is fluid -- and it's a crime.

One aspect of any really big decision is the degree to which it changes one's identity. The little decisions are things that can be reversed, replaced, or otherwise ignored, while the big ones leave their mark.

For example, my college majors determined a large part of the path that my life has followed. They have influenced my perspective, my group of friends, and all the other decisions that I subsequently made. The same goes for marriage and parenthood, as well as a few other biggies.

Shortly after moving to New York, I realized that this decision would have a monumental effect on my identity. Using Facebook, I reconnected with my buddy Aubin. Once he learned that I had moved to the city, he began referring to me as "Yankee." Having spent all my life in the south, this was a pretty big shift. Still, given that my relatives fought for the north (or, as I always put it, the winners), this made some sense.

It's interesting to think about how cities compete for tourists. Apart from spending billions of dollars on advertising, fighting to host World's Fairs and the Olympics, and desperately organizing major events, almost every aspect of a city's infrastructure could be seen as part of a bid for the tourist buck. Police? Handy for keeping the tourists safe. Public transportation? Offers a cheap way for the tourists to get around. Sports teams? Keeps the tourists happy while they're here and gives them handy souvenirs to take home!

I thought about this recently when I read about the town of Zheleznovodsk, Russia. Home to the Mashuk-Akva Term spa, the town seems to have long been casting about for a sense of identity. On the one hand, it is noted for the healing powers of its mineral springs; then again, so are many other towns in the Caucasus Mountains region, where it is located. Not long ago, it hit on the idea of using the iconic enema, the delivery system for many of its healing mineral treatments, as a sign of its civic pride. The first step was posters that stated "Let's beat constipation and sloppiness with enemas!" The signs hung in the local spa and garnered a fair bit of attention.

Buoyed by the success of their enema poster campaign, the spa commissioned a sculpture. Costing $42,000, Mashuk-Akva's enema statue shows an 800-pound bronze bulb-style enema being carried by three Botticelli-esque angels. While the sculptor admits to a certain irony in her finished work, the director of the spa considers it to be an utterly non-ironic symbol of the region. It remains to be seen if Zheleznovodsk's new sculpture will become a cultural icon or will end up being a washout. Regardless, the next time I take a trip, I'm going to give a long, hard look at Russia, the land of the golden enema!

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. The more he thinks about it, the more he's impressed with Zheleznovodsk. Come to think of it, maybe New York needs an enema!