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Standing at the crossroads of a nation in fast lane

By Nadine Hudson (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-12 11:36

He just stands there, seemingly self-absorbed. The old man, on the crossroads. He is small, shrunk by time. He wears a green military-style suit and a knitted woolen cap in black and brown. He holds on to a walking stick as if it were a time machine that can help him make a giant leap from the past to the future.

Shiny scooters with young drivers whiz past him, so close that they nearly touch.

In a small town near Yangshuo, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, the young don't pay the old man any attention. They don't even notice him there. It's as if that generation does not exist. Bulky, black cars with darkened windows speed across the crossroads. They are the representatives of a modern China trying to catch up with rural China.

Pop music belts out of a store that sells chic mobile phones and ultra flat MP4 players. A life insurance company sells security. Fashionable boutiques not just keep up with American fashion but often seem to set the trends. At the hairdressers, a young man smiles, his gelled hair glimmering in the sunshine, standing up like a hedgehog's spikes. The whole town is abuzz with the noise of construction. Multi-story luxury buildings can be seen everywhere.

And next to that, unnoticed by the old man, food stalls sell their goods. Home-made nougat, broken into appetizing cubes with a chisel and hammer. The famous Guilin noodles in their spicy meat broth. The teenage cook cuts the long strings, which he pulls out of the boiling water, with his long, bent and yellow thumbnail. A farmer weighs the juicy green vegetables from her fields on rusty hand scales. She bundles them carefully with a piece of straw.

A young man walks past, carrying his grandma on his back. He seems to be in a great hurry, his burden is heavy. A woman as old as the granny on the back, strolls past at snail's speed, balancing on her shoulders a bamboo yoke from which hang two full buckets of excrement. She empties the public toilets every day, to fertilize her own fields.

The old man looks around himself, lost. He squints, blinded by the blazing sun. He remains standing at the crossroads. The brisk traffic passes him by as if he were a ghost. What has happened to this town? What has happened to his world? Where has it gone?

Behind him, towers the gray facade of a Chinese bank. Ultra-modern automatic teller machines stand at the entrance and smiling staff sit behind thick glass. Somebody is sending a short message in a cyber caf, another is chatting on QQ.

The old man at the crossroads is like a metaphor for the past meeting the future in rural China. Like two films, which run in parallel, the scenes play at the same time - the old man and his silence and the frantic vehicles of the present.