" Tale of two Cities"

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This is a short industrial message.

The thing that has struck me the most, really taken my breath away, stunned me to awe, is the sheer size of growth, change, modernisation in the two cities I have stayed in. Urumqi, already a capital of the Xinjiang province, has what every other city in China has which is lots of growth, cranes dotting every horizon, multi-storey buildings where the max was three, all over the city. In Bole and Kashgar, they are building brand new cities, doubling the size of the old cities, but quadrupling the capacity with high rise apartments and this is not happening piecemeal, it’s happening all at once. It’s so big am running round with the camera trying to find some shots that will encapsulate the size of it all, but really am only able to get a block at a time.

All these vast blocks of empty apartments, where are all these people going to come from, the one baby policy will not create that much of a baby boom, so they must be going to move big populations around the country, well they are practically building their own cities in parts of Africa and sending their citizens there, why not to parts of their own country and especially to parts of the country that are a bit pesky. I originally thought it might be a process of buying love but I think it could be more of a process of overwhelm.

And of course we were all hearing about China will have to lift its domestic consumption or there will be a crunch of some sort, how better than to build a few cities to get the money go round cranked up.

Yes they are loud and they are brash and they are coming, that used to be said about somebody else we know, probably to a place near you.

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Photos

Artists impression
New city block Bole

New city Block
New Kashgar or New Guangzhou as some call it.

1000's of apartments, empty
New Kashgar

More 1000's of apartments empty
New Kashgar

cranes and buildings
As far as the eye can see, New Kashgar

Center piece
Of a new city block, New Kashgar

Comments

[jacko]

hi bowen congrats with your desert challenge .sorry i didnt react earlier but had trouble getting on this blog site and i have been in levin for months now with no internet to speaf off .what are your future plans .its bloody freezing over here but work is slowly picking up.take care mate and please dont go to pakisten people are mad there and they shot 10 tourists there the other day and their guide so watch out .hope too see us soon all the best