a ghost city, really, since the ghosts of aeons past have been buried to make way for progress, and
there are people to occupy some parts of this town. So not a ghost city, but a city of fantasies – a
fantasy that this town could ever have been filled up, a fantasy that people would wish to stay
without the enticement of free money or coercion and manipulation and threats. A fantasy of a city
built like those in the West, which they call inferior and bourgeois because of the opera houses and
art museums and majestic statues and plaza… All those things this city boasts of having.
The simple truth is, fantasies are only dreams, not reality. Fairy tales, perhaps, or just stories
that belong in the mythology of dragons and men who can outrun the sun. And this city is a
dream that isn’t quite coming true – meant for a million, but nearly devoid of people, despite all
the money spent to populate this sorry town in the middle of a desert… A dream to build a new
cultural capital where no people venture, to create a new history for a place dirtied by the blood
of killing centuries past and the dust of abandonment. A dream born of duty, duty to the old
rulers of China to see the country grow and expand, a desperate measure to live up to this most
basic of values to the China of lore and keep up the growth that the great leaders say is going on.
Duty to country and lust for greatness caused such an irrational city to rise from the sands…
He runs from the school even as the thoughts fly in his head, making his way into the
deserted areas of the city. In the year he’s been here – ever since his parents got offered a sum
of money to stay in this half-dead city – he’s explored the roads until he knows the city like
the lines on his hand. He races down the wide avenue with the cream-coloured houses and the
dark blue roofs, chimneys and archways and all. The young cypress trees sway in the wind, the
eerie glow from the Victorian-style street lamps casting shadows onto the grass of the perfectly
mowed gardens. This is a part of town his parents would never be able to live in – and it’s all
empty right now, empty and desolate, so there’s no one to stop him as he climbs up the pillars,
swinging himself up to the balcony of one of the houses. He sits on the railing, his bag thrown
down on the ground below him, and the wind blows through the air… A boy wandering in a city
where everything is kept neat and orderly, but no feet tread for the best part of the day, his only
companion the singing wind…
The gales fly through the city, whipping up the leaves on the roads and floors. The city is
deserted, the tall apartments buildings with their panoramic windows devoid of people, and the
trees and plants have entered, unbidden, into the houses. Metal fences are rusty, and tiles on the
roofs of some of the houses falling down, littering the streets with dark blue slate and broken
glass from the shattered windows.
A new shadow merges with the blades of knee-high grass. The boy is a man now, tall and
broad-shouldered, and he walks down the street alone. The caretakers and gardeners that once
mowed the lawns and cleaned the houses have left, and the once pristine-but-abandoned houses
are still deserted, but now the sprawling vines have crawled over the floors, and flowers have
climbed up the steps of houses. Thirty years since his childhood spent running around town, and
all the people have left: trickling away, first, when money was no longer offered, then waves of
people leaving as the companies packed up for lack of business, and there was nothing to be done
in this strange, unwanted place.
He remembers, still, how his parents packed up one day and left the city, a year after that
carefree afternoon spent roaming this very street. They left abruptly, when the cash didn’t come
and they couldn’t stand the sheer emptiness any more.
The birds twitter above his head, as if agreeing with his picture of the city he once knew but
