Apart from Wild Swan, this book really give me a deeper look into China (the land of my grandfather). The book was divided into three sections: the wall, the country and the factory.
I find it amusing that there are foreigners who are that interested in the Great Wall of China. A few years back, I read a book written by one that more or less hiked from one end of the wall to the other in a few journeys. Here Peter took road trips driving as close to the different sections of the different walls built in different dynasties. And here I am, a Chinese by blood who has not visited the Wall. I don't think I would regret if I never had the chance to visit it before I die. Nobody who had visited it as a tourist could tell me anything to create a desire in my heart to go.
After living in Beijing for a few years, he actually rented a house in a tiny village in the north near the wall. He lived and wrote there, getting to know the few families well. As a result, he was able to give "penetrating" views of the culture, customs, life style, and behavior of his neighbours. He certainly described the political climate as well as its inner working in the tiny village very plainly.
As he pursued the wall and the village life, he surveyed and learned much about factories. Imagine how China blossomed from a mainly agricultural country to the capital of the world's production in a relatively short period of time. Suddenly, everything was made in China. From inferior products, the factories in China have come a long way to make some of the high quality precision goods we now take for granted.
The twenty first century was said to belong to China. Yet I think of the poor two year old who was run over by two vehicles. It took the seventeenth person to walk past, a rubbish recycler, to pick her up off the middle of the road. What would the world's biggest and strongest economy do to the rest of the world if its average citizen treats the life of a child as that of a rat?
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