One of the benefits of road trips to Guangdong is that there’s usually a fair amount of shuttle bus travel involved, which means a lot of driving through the Chinese countryside and local villages. During which I see me some stuff, most of which looks like this:
More pics behind the mosaic. Bear in mind that all of these were shot with a Nokia 95 through the dirty window of a shuttle bus with bad shocks on varying road conditions.
I try to take pictures like this when I can to bring balance to the Force. Because there are two Chinas – the 20th Century China of rotting or unfinished buildings with people living in shotgun shacks selling whatever they can grow or get their hands on to try and get by, and the Modern 21st Century China that Beijing wants you to see on TV for as long as the Olympics are on. Both Chinas are real (not counting the
special effects and overdubs that Beijing apparently resorted to for its opening ceremonies), but only one gets all the press.
Which is not to knock China’s progress. These things take time with or without a free market economy, especially in a country of 1.2 billion populated by people for whom capitalism has only existed in any meaningful form for 15 years, and spent the years before that gaming the system they had.
But I recall the time I was sitting in the rotating rooftop restaurant in a five-star hotel in Shenzhen some years ago with an Anerican telephones executive who looked out upon the urban metropolis and said, “Gee, China has advanced so much economically, it’s almost like being in any Western country.”
“You should leave the hotel sometime,” I didn’t say, but should have.
How the other half lives,
This is dF
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