 |  |
After 5 days in Beijing, we took the high speed train to Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, two hours South of Beijing, where we’d been invited to stay with the family of Anqi (see June posting). When we passed all these clusters of tower blocks, I got a sense of the enormous population of this vast nation as I tried to calculate how many people must be living in each cluster. But then I wondered where all these people went to as there seemed to be no other signs of urban life around them. Later, I read an article which describes this landscape as a symptom of "Two decades of staggering economic growth built on a series of credit bubbles" leaving "... a legacy of “development” defined by wastelands of apartment complexes sitting next to half-empty factory cities, each year filled with fewer workers and more unmanned machines”.
Despite its size (population over 4 million) and long history, Zhengzhou is not known as a tourist destination. I read in the China Morning Post that 80% of the world’s iPhones are manufactured in Zhengzhou, while the New York Times puts the figure at 50% . When I asked our Beijing friends about these notorious Foxconn factories I was told, oh no, China’s industry is all in North and East. When I asked our hosts in Zhengzhou, they said the same. But as we drove out of Zhengzhou to visit their home town across the Yellow River, our hosts pointed out a vast Industrial Zone, but said they didn't know what was there. I guess you might find the iPhone factory there. Both Anqi's parents are engineers (now managers) in the construction industry, but we didn't have the language resources between us to ask about the context of their work.
Despite its size (population over 4 million) and long history, Zhengzhou is not known as a tourist destination. I read in the China Morning Post that 80% of the world’s iPhones are manufactured in Zhengzhou, while the New York Times puts the figure at 50% . When I asked our Beijing friends about these notorious Foxconn factories I was told, oh no, China’s industry is all in North and East. When I asked our hosts in Zhengzhou, they said the same. But as we drove out of Zhengzhou to visit their home town across the Yellow River, our hosts pointed out a vast Industrial Zone, but said they didn't know what was there. I guess you might find the iPhone factory there. Both Anqi's parents are engineers (now managers) in the construction industry, but we didn't have the language resources between us to ask about the context of their work.
RSS Feed