From The Southern Weekend, via Press Interpreter:
Other than the movement of the shade in the courtyard, time in this village seems to have come to standstill and become entirely meaningless.
Primitive mud houses and modern tile houses are crowded together by the dry river bed; at the entrance to the village old men squat together smoking cigarettes, while aimless young men sit on the steps of their homes. Xiao Zhai village is like an orphan abandoned in the deep recesses of a mountain, with only a narrow and beat up dirt road to show that it hasn’t completely lost touch with modern civilization.
When this reporter first arrived in Xiao Zhai village and began walking around, he noticed a young man with thick near-sighted glasses following his every move. This somewhat disheveled young man had a dirty face and stains on his clothes, but something about his expression distinguished him from everyone else in the village. As soon as the young man heard that the reporter had come to do interviews, he enthusiastically invited the reporter to his home, as if he had a lot on his mind he wanted to talk about.
–Translated by Peijin Chen
Original article not online.
