Tag: Hangzhou

Huaxi – China’s Richest Village Community

On By Paul1 Comment


Huaxi's New Skyscraper - World's 15th Tallest

Westerners have always been seeking for Shangri-La, the utopian lifestyle. Search no more. There is in reality a place such as this in China. Talk no more of Hangzhou or Suzhou. It’s a miracle wonder of a place!

Huaxi Golden Pagoda

 It’s called Huaxi, a booming market town of 36,000, first set up in 1961 in the affluent eastern province of Jiangsu. Everyone here has all the luxury that life can offer such as a huge house, a car (Benzs, BMW etc.), even free cooking oil, clothes, healthcare, education etc. Huaxi has fixed assets of 3 billion Yuan (US$362 million). All they have to do is work 7 days a week for the village industrial operations, milling steel or some such industry. Only one condition is that you can never leave. If you do, you lose everything. But just to make it easier to stay, the city has built replicas of the Eiffel Tour, the Sydney Opera House, and the Arc de Triumf to bring the world to its doorstep.

People are not leaving. In fact, it’s attracting lots of migrant workers who hope to be accepted for work permit & in time enjoy such privileges like the permanent residents of Huaxi where each household has been assigned a car & a single-family home of 400 square metres, earn around US$6,000 per head per year. Compared with migrant workers who toil for an average monthly wage of 500 yean (US$60), the prosperity enjoyed by Huaxi villagers is an undeniable miracle

Like the song Hotel California – “You can check out anytime you like but you can never leave”.

 

But why would you want to leave when you’re already living in the best place of the world, as one resident said. Leaving is not the option but “living it up” and seeking other higher aspirations is the objective.

And all this started with the dream, hope & aspiration of one man, Wu Renbao (now in his eighties) who combine market economy, socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Wu Renbao (SIM CHI YIN/NYT)

When Chinese Daily writer Raymond Zhou wrote of Wen Renbao’s retirement, the announcement created aftershocks in the country media similar to what Bill Gates’s retirement about speculation in the software industry. Now Huaxi is headed by Wu Xie’en his fourth son, as elected 100% by the community.

This  amazing video will help clear your curiosity.

 http://youtu.be/yru1C-RE7lc

Info Update:

China’s Engineering Might: Bullet Train

On By Paul2 Comments

By P Chong                                             Thurs. 28 Oct. 2010

AP/Eugene Hoshiko

The image of a powerful modern China in all its mega-engineering projects simply staggers the mind of the Westerners especially the British who first initiated and engineered the Industrial Revolution. In a matter of three decades or so, China has acquired Western technology & set new heights beyond all past human innovative spirit. Even the American standards have been surpassed. This is China’s era.

 

With the closing of the Shanghai‘s Expo by 31 October 2010, China is rolling out its new high-speed trains, shaped like bullets, linking Shanghai & Hangzhou, the Three Gorges Dam which is already working & generating hydro-electricity at full capacities.

 

More mega projects are still in the works: nuclear power plants, a gargantuan project to pump river water from the fertile south to the arid north, & a $32.5 billion, 820-mile (1,300 kilometre) Beijing-to-Shanghai high-speed railway link scheduled to be opened in 2012. China’s engineering triumphs & the nation’s growing ambitions are in line with its economic boom. (Read by same author: “If You Stall . . . Others Roar”).

Completely New Railway Station

On the railway front, its technology is second to none. “We are now much faster,” Railway Ministry spokesman Wang Yongping said at Tuesday’s inauguration of the super-fast line from Shanghai’s western suburb of Hongqiao to the resort city of Hangzhou. “Now other countries are hoping to cooperate with us.” The train will cruise at a top speed of 220 mph (350 kph), making the 125-mile (200-kilometre) trip in 45 minutes.

Pretty Rail Stewardesses At Your Service

Although China holds the patents on the technology, design and equipment used by the CRH380 train, some in the industry question the degree to which China is justified in claiming the latest technology as its own. In a recent interview, Michael Clausecker, Director General of Unife, the Association of the European Rail Industry said, “Everybody knows that a lot of the core technology is European”.

 

The benefits of high-speed railway are obvious, but with speed costs soar and people are reluctant to pay higher fares particularly on shorter routes. However, the government has embarked on upgrading the whole national network.

A Female Construction Worker Watches As Train Passes By

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