I live in a 32-floor high-rise building directly across from Old Stone Man Beach, a strip of Yellow Sea shoreline that is a quiet enclave in the winter and a full-fledged free-for-all of luxury cars, tour buses, hawkers, and a deluge of local tourists in the summer.
Across from the front entrance of my apartment complex, rising from the edge of the sea, is the five-star Hyatt, which offers upscale resort-style accommodations, and is the setting of opulent weddings and other lavish events. 
This neighborhood, known as Lao Shan, just six miles from the immaculate waterfront walking street and marina that was built to host the 2008 Olympic sailing competition (and to impress international spectators), is the type of sterile high-rise commuter suburbia that has been sprouting from the the old fishing-villages turned Special Economic Zones (think: massive cities of 7 million plus residents) that have dramatically altered the countenance of China’s eastern seaboard over the last 25 years. Not too long ago, none of this (except of course for the sea) existed. It is difficult to imagine that less than ten years ago, simple fishing boats lined the Old Stone Man’s shores and the gridlock of Porsches, Lexuses, and other high-end vehicles, simply did not exist.
Across from the back entrance of my apartment complex is a tangled web of partially-paved dirt streets that one Chinese colleague of mine calls “the slums.” This is the remnant of the China I befriended when I lived in Hubei and Xinjiang over 15 years ago. This is where workers–who toil all day on bamboo scaffolding, tearing down and then re-building apartment complexes and other buildings–sit over plates of steaming-hot dumplings after a hard day’s work while the night-shift of construction workers pick up their tools and continue building into the early-morning hours. 
Slipshod storefronts line these small streets, featuring the same type of green trousers and overcoats and black canvas shoes that you could imagine Mao’s revolutionaries donned, and that are worn by today’s figurative foot soldiers who toil for the progress of their country– those men and women who work, build, and labor without complaint. If you enter these stores, you will often see beds and most likely small, box-like televisions, which reveal that these tiny abodes of business double for homes in the off-hours. Surrounding these small stores are slovenly-looking restaurants with shaky fold-away tables, tiny fold-away stools, and flavorful street food for all tastes and appetites. 
Piles of pineapples and watermelon fill three-wheeled carts, ready to be carved and cut especially for you; bread ensconced in oil and sesame seeds is pulled from long ovens and placed on tables to tempt passersby; balls of dough are manipulated into noodles or filled with pork, eggs, or ramps and rolled into steamed buns or dumplings; and skewers of pork, beef, squid, tofu, and mushrooms roast over troth-like barbecues wafting their enticing aromas down the dusty street. Weathered tarps and pieces of broken plywood separate each stall from its neighbor, and because of the lack of walls, they aid in distinguishing one establishment from the next.
Not one of these restaurants would come close to passing an American health inspection, not when cheap plastic fans blow dusty air over slabs of raw meat and lifeless whole fish for the purpose of staving off flies and other bugs or when bottles of beer are chilled in the same tank water 
that houses uncooked–and often still alive–seafood. Most foreigners–and practically all wealthy Chinese–would never eat in these “slums,” but they are missing out because in place of sterile plates of humdrum food is genuinely warm and convivial service by family-run establishments that treat you like one of their own, and whose lao bans (owners) often sit with you and swap stories. These “slums,” alive and abuzz with energy and commerce and aglow with the smiles and stories of its shopkeepers, is truly a universe away from the decadent, sterile Hyatt and its surrounding stoic suburbs.
After meandering through the tortuous “slum” streets, you come to a small alleyway wedged narrowly between two construction sites. This dirt and dust pathway leads you out of the “slums,” and opens up suddenly to the paved several-lane road, spilling you out rather jarringly into the imposing glow of the newly-built Lion Mall. The Lion Mall (Jin Shi Guang Chang in Chinese), a 230,000 square-meter shopping mall, was developed by the Malaysian company, Parkson Retail Group, at a cost of 1.5 billion Chinese yuan. The mall is a grandiose structure with multiple screens adorning its exterior walls, flashing advertisements for expensive wine and extravagant goods, that is reminiscent of New York’s Times Square.
Cross the busy paved road, ducking from buses, taxis, and opulent cars, and enter the mall, its waxed floors, upscale bakeries, I-Max theater, full-service gym, and rows of high-end stores glistening with the hope of an influx of New Money, but mostly trafficked by the newly-curious. If you look closely–nestled between the well-known upscale stores–you will also see oddly misplaced American brands such as Coleman Coolers that have been reimagined as must-have luxury items for the affluent, and look even closer and you will see absurdly high price-tags attached to camping basics such as thermoses and portable grills. Ride the escalator’s five stories, and you will pass kitschy restaurants themed to celebrate or exploit the country’s various ethnic minorities (depending on how you want to look at it) such as Yunnan hotpot, 
where you can eat amongst fake jungle foliage and caged birds and its adjacent Xin Jiang flatbread and kabob restaurant, where you can be served by skull-capped donning waiters imported from Kazak-minority towns in the furthest reaches of Chinese rule. This mall, with all its opulent splendor, is too a universe away from the “slums,” where a meal of 30 dumplings and a large beer costs the equivalent of two US dollars. Yet, with all its psychological distance, these two universes are actually right next door. Two worlds existing side-by-side, one born of neighbors and survival and the other made of foreign conglomerates and Gatsby-like dreams.
Although initially uncertain as to whether or not this nickname, “the slums,” was affectionate or patronizing, I have come to understand that the moniker reveals an amalgam of ardor and condescension, and that (and here is the difficult part to admit) I am not completely innocent of possessing this conflicting attitude. Although I did not come to China to stroll around fancy shopping centers, the Lion Mall, and the culture it represents, is indeed pleasant, and as much as I turn my nose up at the construction of the mall and view such progress as a disease, it is indeed a comfortable disease. And, as much as I take pleasure in sitting on the small stools in the slums’ food stalls, I can enjoy my $2 meal knowing that I can also afford to cross the street and eat at the Lion Mall or the Hyatt.
Thus, it is easy for me to denounce the Lion Mall and the progress it represents as I share beers with construction workers, but the truth is that the construction of that mall–and the new one being build right next to it–is indeed providing salaries for the very laborers with whom I am sharing drinks and stories. It is easy for me because, unlike the workers, who have traveled from less-developed parts of the country to toil in my neighborhood by day and sleep in makeshift barracks on the side of the road by night, I have choices. I can choose to eat dusty street food or a 5-star Hyatt meal; I can choose to buy Mao canvas shoes for $2 or I can buy Nike running shoes for $120; I can denounce progress as a disease because I have the privilege to opt for it or to opt out of it, and ultimately, in my 32-story high-rise building overlooking the sea, I am indeed opting for it. Yet, while in my cozy, modern paradise, I try to remember, there’s a hell of a good universe next door; let’s go.
inspired by the following e.e. cummings poem:
pity this busy monster, manunkind,
not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)
plays with the bigness of his littleness
--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh
and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical
ultraomnipotence. We doctors know
a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go
e. e. cummings
[contact-form][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Website’ type=’url’/][contact-field label=’Comment’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’/][/contact-form]
