We're always reading in the news about American manufacturers operating plants in China, cheap labor in China, but your essay put a human face on it, contextualized it, and made it real in a way that others don't. I felt like I could see those cities rising, the half-finished scaffolding and dust blowing in the wind. I hope that it helps people to understand where China was when I wrote it, which was in ninety-two. I haven't been back to the Special Economic Zones, but those places are all established, and there are more of them now. China is an incredibly dynamic place, but you can also see it's an ecological monstrosity.
Animals die, people get sick.
It completely destroys the fabric of a country when you have unlimited growth, but it's amazing in that this is what everyone wants to happen. This is development. You mention in the book that you don't read much travel writing. I don't want someone to mediate and interpret the place for me before I see it. Jan Morris is interesting.