Hey, I went to Guangdong and lived in a shack on a construction site with 12 other guys in a tiny room. There was no party there. There were no police there when trouble happened. Across China, people are struggling to redefine notions of success and failure, right and wrong, good and evil. The quest for something to believe in has become so universal and profound that it is one of the unifying characteristics of life in China today.
Farmers talk about it, migrant workers in cities talk about it.
It is a preoccupation of intellectuals, students and members of the new business class. To fill the void once occupied by the all-encompassing system instituted in 1949 by Mao Zedong, Chinese have turned in every direction. A revolutionary named Deng Xiaoping was born in Guang'an in 1904 and later fought Japanese invaders and the Nationalists who opposed the Communist revolution. In 1978, Mr. Deng started an economic revolution by opening this nation's door to the world. But it's not like the party says.