From the New York Times:

When John Pomfret arrived in China in 1980, ready to begin language classes at the University of Nanjing, he looked out the train window at a timeless pastoral scene in the fields outside Shenzhen. “I saw men steering wooden plows pulled by water buffalo, women hunkered over knee-deep in rice paddy water, and travelers tottering on clunky black bicycles along dirt paths,” he writes. “This was a view of rural China that I would come to know well, and one I believed would be everlasting.”

In 2004, after multiple stints as a foreign correspondent in China, he returned to his starting point, Shenzhen, to find that the loose collection of villages now bristled with skyscrapers, and its citizens – go-getters from the four corners of China – barked into cellphones, hailed taxis, wore business suits and single-mindedly chased after the new Chinese dream of riches and material possessions. [Full Text]

Read a CDT interview with Pomfret about “Chinese Lessons.”