China’s Richest Village | NetEase “Onlooker”
Chin Chen—NetEase “Onlooker”
According to the Xinhua News Agency, the village of Huaxi, some 80 miles from Shanghai is a kind of utopia. Each resident owns a villa, a car, and earns U.S.$15,000 a year. The town’s 2,600 residents are co-owners of Huaxi’s 74-story luxury hotel and the village’s shops and factories. Each year, about two million curious tourists visit to marvel at Huaxi’s success; this year, their ranks included photographer Chin Chen. According to Chen, Huaxi’s gleaming surface conceals a more complicated reality. Huaxi’s villa-owners, as it turns out, are not the town’s only residents. The others, migrant workers and villagers who live on the outskirts of town make less money and writes Chen, “have no shot at social mobility.”
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According to the Xinhua News Agency, the village of Huaxi, some 80 miles from Shanghai is a kind of utopia. Each resident owns a villa, a car, and earns U.S.$15,000 a year. The town’s 2,600 residents are co-owners of Huaxi’s 74-story luxury hotel and the village’s shops and factories. Each year, about two million curious tourists visit to marvel at Huaxi’s success; this year, their ranks included photographer Chin Chen. According to Chen, Huaxi’s gleaming surface conceals a more complicated reality. Huaxi’s villa-owners, as it turns out, are not the town’s only residents. The others, migrant workers and villagers who live on the outskirts of town make less money and writes Chen, “have no shot at social mobility.”