Ever since he was mugged and badly beaten one morning, Chan takes two bodyguards when he ventures out. The authorities are no help, he says. They just want your money too. The city formerly known as Canton has been infected by capitalism's mercantile excesses ever since the West forced open its doors as a treaty port in 1842. Today Guangzhou is China's best example of the worst the West has to offer.
Crime is new.
So are beggars in the streets. This is a city that thumbs its nose at the government, holding on to as much of its wealth as it can, ignoring orders it dislikes, following its own drummer. Guangzhou's party chief, Gao Siren, says he wants to steady the city's headlong pace to a more controlled, sustainable drive, but everyone in Guangzhou is too busy making a fast buck to pay attention. His father was a veteran of the Long March. Young Wang Shi was a Red Guard at 15, a soldier in the People's Liberation Army at 18, an independent entrepreneur at 33, a tycoon at 37, a supporter of the students in Tiananmen Square at 38.