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" I sat there on a wooden park bench and waited for the man with the sledgehammer to break a sweat. The sidewalk was packed with pedestrians going every which way, some dressed like they worked in one of the many tall office buildings that surrounded us and others wearing knockoff designer heels that tapped on the gray concrete as they walked by carrying multiple shopping bags.  Slam, slam, slam, slam. He&amp;#039;d stand there pounding the sledge into the steel spike he&amp;#039;d just stabbed into the rocky earth, then scrape whatever he&amp;#039;d done to one side with a garden hoe as people walked past paying no attention -- he was just another worker ant on just another of the thousand construction sites in this runaway city -- and he would do this until he became tired, when he&amp;#039;d hand the hammer off to another man. There were three of them, wearing loafers.  The travel guides for Shenzhen advised not to drink the water, so I pulled out a plastic bottle of H2O from my backpack and hydrated while I continued to watch. The sun was out and I was completely covered in sweat. They glanced over at me as I inhaled the water, wiped the sweat from my eyes, and offered them some, but with smiles they refused, as if to say, We don&amp;#039;t need that, this is nothing. They would not sweat.  I thought about how in America we&amp;#039;ve been breaking ground for new buildings with actual machines for like a hundred years. Shenzhen is a brand-new city, a social explosion, with buildings blasting up out of the rock everywhere you look, with everybody being from someplace else and they all just got here. Chances are these guys were farmers not long ago, and they definitely have some old-school ideas about digging up dirt. And they dug and they dug with their backs and their little tools, digging a hole all the way to America. I wonder if that&amp;#039;s what Chinese kids do at the beach. You see this a lot in this part of China, something very modern mixed with something very old. Not far from here, just after I walked by a Bentley dealership, I saw a man fiercely pounding a fish the size of my thigh onto the concrete, trying to break its head so that it&amp;#039;d stop flopping around.  A few days later I went back to the construction site. The men were gone, and the ground they&amp;#039;d been pounding on was gone, too. Where they&amp;#039;d stood was now a huge hole about fifteen feet deep and fifteen feet wide.  I stared down into the hole that they had dug with only a sledge and a garden hoe, and I was amazed. About a year ago I walked over to my favorite military-surplus store in Los Angeles, the same one that was used in the movie Falling Down, starring Michael Douglas, to buy an olive-drab embroidered American-flag patch for my M-65 field jacket since it felt a bit naked without one. When I was at the register purchasing my patch, for some reason I flipped it over and there on the back of it was a little sticker that read, MADE IN CHINA.  I pointed this out to the cashier and my exact words were, &amp;quot;What is this?&amp;quot;  This is the place where they make the American flags. And not only does China produce American flags, they manufacture every other flag as well, including even a really quality facsimile of the Nazi flag. When I asked one store owner why he sold them, he simply said, &amp;quot;People buy.&amp;quot; Somewhere in America there&amp;#039;s a neo-Nazi sitting in his room oblivious to the fact that the swastika he proudly hangs on his wall was made in Red China.  But then, there&amp;#039;s really nothing very Red about Shenzhen. On the coast not far from Hong Kong, Shenzhen, China, is a city of eleven million that did not exist twenty years ago. In 1980, it had a population of less than 100,000. By 1990, about 900,000 people lived here. By 2000, 6.5 million.  In 1979, when the Chinese government decided to make it their first experiment in profit, Shenzhen was just a fishing village. Deng Xiaoping&amp;#039;s experiment in becoming &amp;quot;gloriously rich&amp;quot; seems to be going pretty well, because everything -- everything -- here in this new city is for sale. Even if something is supposed to be illegal, if it makes money, they generally look the other way. People here say that Shenzhen is the richest city in China. They also call it the most dangerous. After checking out of my hotel, I decided to jump on the metro, take it to the end of the line, hoping to find a place there that was a bit more reasonably priced, my logic being that of an American: the farther away, the lower the prices.  At the end of the line was an enthusiastic amusement park called Window of the World, which I stared at for a while. Since it&amp;#039;s difficult for most Chinese to travel to other parts of the world, they have built a replica theme park bringing that world to the people of China, with copies of the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Stonehenge, the Statue of Liberty, etc. It&amp;#039;s like Las Vegas, but the Chinese seem to realize they&amp;#039;re copies.  The park&amp;#039;s official slogan is, &amp;quot;Give me a day and we will show you a splendid world.&amp;quot;  With all my personal belongings packed inside of my backpack for this trip (journal, pens, camera, one extra set of clothes, and that&amp;#039;s it), I made my way through all the Chinese tourists, thousands of them, who had come to the park by the busload to see the wide world and who all seemed to really be getting a kick out of their park, digital cameras out taking smiling group pictures, which made me feel kind of bad bashing it like that in my head because this was what they had, and this was what brought much joy to them. While standing there on the street corner looking around through my sunglasses wondering what to do next, in a sea of jet-black hair I saw a lone guy with blond hair dressed in business casual walking among the people.  Relieved that he spoke English, I asked if he knew of any cheap hotels in the area. He did, said it was Motel 6 in quality, and that he was staying there. If I wanted I could follow him since he was headed toward it right now.   On our way there he briefed me a little bit on the surrounding neighborhood, Happy Valley, where filthy-rich Hong Kong businessmen with second wives bought these huge multimillion-dollar houses. He observed that they still hang their clothes up outside to dry -- &amp;quot;Even though they all have millions of dollars, they still don&amp;#039;t buy a dryer.&amp;quot; He tells me this with a confused smile and then points out a pet store nearby, which he referred to as a &amp;quot;Chinese meat market,&amp;quot; as well as a McDonald&amp;#039;s (the first in China is here in Shenzhen, so it&amp;#039;s kind of historic), a KFC, a Pizza Hut, and a Wal-Mart. There are nine Wal-Marts in Shenzhen, which is something considering that not that long ago there were hardly nine people here. He also suggested that if I had some time, to check out the Chinese restaurant up the street that&amp;#039;s next to the Pizza Hut called Grey Wolf. Not for the food but because they have a sign posted outside warning that no Japanese were allowed inside.  I asked where he was from, as well as what brought him here.  &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m from New Mexico,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;On business.&amp;quot;  When I pressed him on what business he was in, he simply said, &amp;quot;Furniture.&amp;quot;  Like every other businessman I would ask here, he raved about the factories, said I&amp;#039;d be amazed and impressed at how clean they were, and not only that, all of the people who worked inside of them all really enjoyed working there, they loved their jobs, they were hardworking and very loyal employees. He said they only get paid about $1.50 a day. But the workers get to live at the factories, too, so they&amp;#039;re never late, and they get fed. The only holiday they really get is the New Year, when they all head back home with all the money they saved up, to celebrate. That must be some party, I thought.  &amp;quot;There are thousands of factories around Shenzhen,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;Thousands.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s not just Shenzhen, either. The megacity is the hallmark of the Chinese century. To keep its economy cooking, the Chinese government needs labor concentrated in one place, and so peasants in the west are drawn to populate brand-new cities in the east that the government is building at a rate of ten a year. And everybody, from the lowest factory worker to the fattest-cat businessman, seems to be totally high on money.  If the Chinese aren&amp;#039;t building or making something, they are buying it one shopping bag at a time. They shop here frantically, like every day is the last day of the holiday shopping season.  To get to the shopping district in Shenzhen you first have to run a gantlet of total fucking misery, the outstretched hands of the excluded with their gnarly deformities and multiple missing limbs, some with faces half melted off and all doing this repetitive sorrowful cry for a handout -- begging for whatever spare change they can collect from you in their round plastic bowls. The lady with both legs missing dragging her body on the cement, with her little son, connected to her via a dog collar around his neck, pleading for help, which nobody gave her. Several people I spoke to told me these people had been maimed in the factories, another said that it&amp;#039;s well-known that gangsters kidnap children and hack their limbs off to make them pitiful, and then force them to beg. And then, a millisecond later, you are in the shopping district, the poor gone like a bad dream. Everyone suddenly looks stylish and prosperous. This neighborhood is known as a hangout for the most professional of pickpockets, as well as the world capital of faux merchandise.  The Americans have complained that so many of their products are being hijacked by bootleggers, and the Chinese say they&amp;#039;re cracking down, but somebody forgot to tell the bootleggers of Shenzhen. In fact, a fun game to play is the find-something-that&amp;#039;s-not-a-fake game. You can spend days in Shenzhen playing this game, and you&amp;#039;ll always lose. Everything is bootlegged, every make and model of Air Jordans in every color scheme imaginable and not, every big-name and no-name article of clothing you can think of and every gadget possible -- iPods, PlayStations, DVDs, video games -- and millions of T-shirts, many with Banksy stencils on them. Those Che T-shirts are made here, too, to be shipped to every college town in America. Shirts made in a communist country by workers who make $1.50 a day, shipped to slackers in a rich country who&amp;#039;ll pay twenty bucks they got from Dad for a T-shirt. I&amp;#039;ll bet that&amp;#039;s just the way Che wanted to be remembered. Everybody in Shenzhen wears T-shirts and clothing with En-glish lettering on it, and as English is rare here, I wondered if a lot of them know what their clothes say. It&amp;#039;s like the silk screeners ran out of stuff to print and were all like, &amp;quot;Hey, here&amp;#039;s a dictionary, let&amp;#039;s make a shirt! Awesome!&amp;quot; I saw shirts that read: WHO THE WISH ARE BLACKWIRE, RED HOT LICKS OPERATION, and BIZARRE MUST AWESOME WANT. Being thirty, I&amp;#039;m old enough to remember when Vans shoes used to be made in America. That fact used to be a marketing tool for them. The shoe boxes, advertisements, and every shoe label all used to advertise &amp;quot;Made in the U.S. A.&amp;quot; But then one day, I noticed that they no longer stressed that they were Made in the U.S. A., which kind of bummed me out and seriously made me want to consider going to a different brand. But they still make their old-school models, and I&amp;#039;ve stayed brand loyal to them solely because of that.   I was wearing a pair of the old-school high-tops (which have the words MADE IN CHINA stamped discreetly on the inside) when I was crossing a busy intersection. A guy coming toward me stopped, quickly glanced down to my footwear, and looked up at me. My shoes seemed to mean something to him, so I said hello and told him that I was looking for a guide/translator to help me out here in Shenzhen. He was a white guy, with a hint of a Nor-Cal accent, and he said that he knew of several people who could possibly help me out.  He and his friends invited me to join them for lunch. As we walked he asked, &amp;quot;Do you skate or listen to punk music?&amp;quot;  I answered yes to both and asked how he guessed that. It was the old-school Vans that gave it away, and my new friend Nolan not only shared a lot of similar interests in music as me, he also grew up one town over from me, we both hung out at the same places and knew a lot of the same people, which made me feel at home in his company now on the other side of the planet. Nolan and his friends explained to me that in the city it is somewhat safe, but on the outskirts it&amp;#039;s like the Wild West, and the stories that they told me one right after another about what goes on in those areas were straight out of A Clockwork Orange -- a guy hacking a girl&amp;#039;s arm off with a machete just to get at her purse as he sped by on a motorcycle, people getting shot, robbed, gangs who will take over entire public buses and just start beating the shit out of everybody, and so on.  Looking out the window at the sidewalk throbbing with people, I told them I was curious about what the people who lived here did for work, since if you walked the streets here you&amp;#039;d get the impression that all they did all day long was shop. They told me that most of the jobs here supported the factories, trade, logistics, tourism, as well as second wives. Second wives are a reality here in Shenzhen as well as big business; a lot of Hong Kong businessmen have them for prestige, as a sign of wealth, as well as to get their rocks off.  Nolan&amp;#039;s wife knew of a guy who dated a girl who was a full-time second wife but also worked a second job as a part-time girlfriend.  A massive quantity of food arrived at our table, plate after plate after plate, more food than all four of us could eat -- steamed dumplings, rice, various meats and vegetables, and we also shared a Kingway beer, which we drank with shot glasses. It was while lighting up postmeal smokes and drinking away on another Kingway that Nolan&amp;#039;s wife brought up how he had been held hostage recently by four Shenzhen thugs.  It had just happened a couple months before, so it was all still fresh on his mind. He&amp;#039;d gotten involved in a &amp;quot;business&amp;quot; venture with some Australians, who looked at China as a gold mine. The company Nolan worked for owed $32,000 U.S. to some unsavory characters, and Nolan warned his partners that debts had to be paid because &amp;quot;people here don&amp;#039;t call their lawyers, they deal with their problems &amp;#039;Mafia style.&amp;#039; &amp;quot;  And so of course four guys showed up at Nolan&amp;#039;s house demanding their money. Nolan told them that he didn&amp;#039;t have it and they threatened to kill him. He called Australia, and they told him they didn&amp;#039;t have the money, either, but to hang tight and they&amp;#039;d figure out a way out of this. Yeah, hang tight, you&amp;#039;re in Australia, easy for you to say, Nolan yelled at the guys. Meanwhile, the four thugs told Nolan that they were going to live with him 24/7 until they got their money.  In a panic, Nolan started text-messaging and e-mailing Australia constantly, until a couple days later they cooked up a harebrained scheme. Nolan was to tell them that the Australian and American embassies had been contacted and if anything happened to him it would turn into a huge international incident, and of course he would have their money for them the very next day. Miraculously, the guys left and said they&amp;#039;d be back the next day to collect their money or commit a murder.  During that time, Nolan grabbed all of his important files and documents, closed up their shop, and placed a note on the door that read: &amp;quot;Due to Australian holiday, our office is closed. Inquiries please call company lawyer.&amp;quot; He then went into hiding for a while. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s China,&amp;quot; he says with a smile. What was terrifying is now a &amp;quot;learning experience.&amp;quot;  The entire meal for four with plenty of food left over, and plenty of beer, was eighty yuan, or about ten dollars. Very pleased with that, we all got up to leave, and while I was putting the change away into my very out-of-fashion chain wallet, Nolan suggested that I place my wallet in my front pocket instead, since pickpocketing is a huge nuisance in Shenzhen, in some areas even an epidemic. I showed them the chain, and all three told me that it didn&amp;#039;t matter, if they want it, they&amp;#039;ll get it, and they&amp;#039;ve personally seen it all, from strong-arm robbery to guys using ten-inch tweezers to get money out of people&amp;#039;s pockets on park benches. So I put my bulky leather in my front pocket, and as I was throwing on my backpack, Nolan said I was wearing it wrong and suggested that I wear it in front, because wearing it the proper way was a good way to get everything stolen out of it. I was not quite sure if he was screwing with me or not, but I did as he said, then blurted out, &amp;quot;I look like a dork.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;No dude, you look Shenzhen local!&amp;quot;   Being half Korean, I&amp;#039;m blessed with a lot of Asian features, but I definitely do not look Chinese to the Chinese or to anybody else for that matter. And of course, as any visitor here will tell you, people curiously will stare, but when they did, it almost always wouldn&amp;#039;t be in the face. Their eyes would be drawn to my arms, since they&amp;#039;re covered in tattoos.  Unlike in America, where having any tattoos is about as rebellious now as buying something that&amp;#039;s nonrecyclable, in China tattoos are still somewhat taboo, and I was told they were looked down on by most Chinese.  One evening I spent an hour or so inside a dark club on the second floor of a building downtown, drinking Tsingtao beers while watching the three go-go dancers up onstage do their thing, yawned, and then decided to go over to the disco club next door. The doorman fixed on my tattoos as I walked up, then pointed to the sign by the door that had a bunch of Chinese writing and underneath it a bunch of stuff in English about some kind of dress code. Whatever. It was the second club that night where I was rejected at the door because of the color of my skin. As I walked over to a different club down the street, I came across another individual who was having the same problem.  The security guard to this club was angry, and he was standing in front of the main entrance, blocking the guy and shaking his head and screaming. When I walked up and asked what was going on, the guy being rejected said, &amp;quot;Fuck this place, man!&amp;quot; and went on to say that he couldn&amp;#039;t get into this club because they didn&amp;#039;t like foreigners, and that it was &amp;quot;bullshit!&amp;quot; I agreed. This was an injustice. I mentioned how I had the same problem as well in this neighborhood. Still flustered from the doorman, he looked at me and I told him that I got into a couple clubs okay, but there were several others that wouldn&amp;#039;t let me in. He sized me up and we shook hands. He introduced himself as Larry and told me that he knew of another club that we could go to that was foreigner friendly. Larry had an accent, and once in the cab, we both cracked the windows and lit up. &amp;quot;Where you from?&amp;quot; I asked him.  &amp;quot;Originally from South Africa,&amp;quot; he said, &amp;quot;then Amsterdam, then Beijing for two years, to Shenzhen four months ago.&amp;quot; When I asked why he moved here, like all the others he said, &amp;quot;Business.&amp;quot; He then reached into his pocket and handed me a fat sack of hash and told me to take a whiff -- I did -- and as he told me that it was really good, he asked if I was interested in maybe purchasing any.  I was, but I was in another country, and I&amp;#039;d just met this guy minutes before, so I just said No to Drugs, to see how he&amp;#039;d react. He respected my decision and said that was cool, and if I needed any to let him know as he put the hash away back into his pocket.  &amp;quot;Want some coke?&amp;quot; Larry added helpfully. &amp;quot;I could hook that up, too, no problem.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;How much?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Thirteen hundred.&amp;quot;  Hmm. With the cabdriver oblivious to what was going on in his backseat, I told Larry I&amp;#039;d think about it and then asked him how he gets his stuff. Head cocked, one eye squinted, he asked, &amp;quot;Are you a spy?&amp;quot; I told him, &amp;quot;No way, me? A spy? Ha!&amp;quot; I told him that I was just curious. &amp;quot;I read somewhere that a lot of contraband comes into Shenzhen through Hong Kong, that it&amp;#039;s a major drug-trafficking border and was just wondering if that&amp;#039;s true or not.&amp;quot;  He told me that this was correct, that it all comes in from all over, and a lot of it filters into Shenzhen through Hong Kong and into greater China. That, he said, is why he moved here. He sells to several Chinese, but mostly his clientele is foreigners.  When we finally hit our destination, the cabdriver dropped us off, and as he drove away, my new friend pointed out across the street to the club, and instead of going there first like I thought we were going to do, we pregamed it at a 7-Eleven, which are on every block.  I extinguished my cigarette before going in, but I noticed Larry walk right in still smoking on his cigarette, easy as you please. He nodded his head that you can do that here and that they don&amp;#039;t care.  So with lit cigarettes and open containers, we hung out in the 7-Eleven. Larry spoke about his occupation openly and pointed out the window to the steps outside and said you could smoke some hash there if you wanted, people did it all the time here before going to the club across the street.  &amp;quot;What about the cops?&amp;quot; I asked.  &amp;quot;A lot of the cops have no clue at all what weed or hash looks or smells like,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;Many times they&amp;#039;ll walk right past you. Unless you&amp;#039;re causing problems, like fighting at a club, they pretty much leave you alone here, and the fine for possession is small.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;But you&amp;#039;re a dealer. What about for dealing?&amp;quot; I asked.  He threw me a look. &amp;quot;If you get caught dealing,&amp;quot; he said, &amp;quot;they&amp;#039;ll kill you.&amp;quot; After we finished our drinks, my new friend and I, his pockets bulging with drugs, crossed to the club across the street, where it was reggae night. Lost on my way to Wal-Mart, I asked a couple on the street if they knew where it was, and both looked at me like, What are you saying? So I pulled out a pen and paper and wrote the word wAL-MART in capital letters and showed it to them. They both instantly pointed me in the right direction.  A few days later, as I walked in the same neighborhood, a young woman approached me on the street, and after I told her, &amp;quot;Sorry, I don&amp;#039;t understand or speak Chinese,&amp;quot; she said, &amp;quot;Wal-Mart?&amp;quot;  And I happily pointed her in the right direction. The first time I was in Wal-Mart China, I was standing over by the underwear, comparing and contrasting the prices and quality of the socks, when an individual with totally fucked-up and rotting teeth approached me with a Samsung cell phone in hand. He got my attention by tapping me firmly on the arm, turned his cell phone on, showed me a jpeg of a cute smiling Asian girl wearing all white. &amp;quot;You like?&amp;quot; he said. Wal-Mart shoppers swarmed all around us. I gave him a confused look, pretending not to know what he wanted. He then typed some stuff into his cell phone and showed it to me again.  It said: &amp;quot;1,200.&amp;quot;   I shook my head no and requested that he leave me alone and go away, which he did. I then went back to being a consumer, grabbing a five-pack of the white socks (Made in China), which I thought was the best bang for the buck, and made my way to find some disposable razors, since I needed a shave as well. He approached me again, but this time with the number &amp;quot;800&amp;quot; on his cell phone. I looked around for security, or maybe somebody else who thought it was a bit odd that some stranger was approaching me inside a Wal-Mart trying to pimp out this Chinese girl to me, who of course in situations like this always ends up looking nothing like the girl in the photo. Shenzhen is known as the land of a million massage girls because I swear to God you can&amp;#039;t go anywhere without being harassed for a &amp;quot;massage-ae.&amp;quot;  No fan of the hard sell, I gave him a stern, &amp;quot;No! I&amp;#039;m not interested!&amp;quot; and with my hands motioned for him to &amp;quot;Shoo, go away!&amp;quot; and made my way to the back, where the bikes were.  I was in the market for a bicycle because I was covering a lot of ground on foot, and I figured that if I had a bike, I&amp;#039;d be able to see a lot more. I didn&amp;#039;t see any American brands, or even U.S. brands that had factories in China. All I found in their inventory were straight-up mass-produced Made in China bikes that looked like after only a couple of pedals they might fall apart. But the major selling point was that they were cheap, a majority of them were less than 200 yuan -- twenty-five dollars -- so I decided to go with the matte-black mountain bike that had the word Superior written on it in white, which if you asked me was a bit of false advertising, and I would come to find out that it was the complete opposite of my matte-black Cannondale (Made in U.S. A.) back home.  Pedaling away from Wal-Mart on my new ride, not sure if I&amp;#039;d be killed first by the total anarchy and mayhem I was now sharing the road with or bite the dust by having my bike fall apart beneath me, I came across a vibrant neighborhood that had hundreds of street vendors, so I parked my bike over at a bike rack, locked it up, and headed out on foot to explore. When I came back an hour later, much to my relief I saw that my bike was no longer there, that somebody had done me a favor and had stolen it.  I finally met up with my guide, Jessie, who was an editor for her college student magazine. She told me that if she were to assign a story on Shenzhen, it would have to cover three things, and in order those three would be nightclubs, shopping, and eating. I tell her of those three I&amp;#039;d be interested in exploring the nightclubs, and so she recommended that we go check out an area in Shenzhen near Sea World, which is located in an area of Shenzhen known as an expat community. Think: Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. &amp;quot;Jessie&amp;quot; speaks near-perfect English, and she&amp;#039;s stylishly dressed in a boutique-boho style, brown leather boots, a couture V-neck shirt, a skirt that goes down to her knees, and she has a large amount of ear piercing.  When we first get there, she takes me to the little fishing village that&amp;#039;s all that&amp;#039;s left of old Shenzhen, and on our way there we pass by a beggar asking for a handout and I ask her why that person is poor. &amp;quot;They are lazy and don&amp;#039;t want to work,&amp;quot; she says.  While I&amp;#039;m staring out at the fishing community, it&amp;#039;s still hard to imagine that this is what Shenzhen looked like in 1979, before Deng Xiaoping made it the first Special Economic Zone, opening China up to free trade for the first time. A bunch of wooden shacks by the shore and wooden fishing boats parked in the water.  Everything is spelled out in English in this neighborhood, and throughout the evening, everywhere we go, Jessie knows everybody, the doormen, hosts and hostesses, waitresses, deejays, owners, everybody. And the whole time she&amp;#039;s showing me around and saying hi to everybody she knows and pointing out the various clubs, bars, and upscale restaurants that serve everything but Chinese food, all the while she&amp;#039;s constantly on her cell phone, calling somebody or text-messaging.  At an outdoor patio table, she introduces me to three expats who are enjoying locally brewed Chinese beers and tells them that I am a journalist doing a story on Shenzhen. I say hello to the baby boomers as I take a seat at the wooden table and start off by ordering an imported beer from the hostess, who&amp;#039;s wearing a sexy miniskirt, and asking them what they do here. One of the expats, an American wearing a green-and-black-striped rugby shirt advertising an Irish bar in Hong Kong, answers first. &amp;quot;Basically...&amp;quot; thinks about it for a second, and then says, &amp;quot;work, chase women, and drink beer. Yup, I&amp;#039;d say that&amp;#039;s about it.&amp;quot;  An Englishman in business casual next to him, says, &amp;quot;No, here the women chase you.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;Aw, yeah,&amp;quot; says Rugby Shirt. &amp;quot;Chinese women are fun to ride. Back home you slap a girl on the ass, you get a lawsuit. Here you get a fuck and a phone number.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;Now don&amp;#039;t go back home and write all this down in your article and fuck this place up,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;We have a very good thing going on here and we like to keep it that way.&amp;quot; I ask them if they miss home at all, and immediately feel stupid. &amp;quot;No!&amp;quot; they say in unison. &amp;quot;When I go home now, I want to immediately leave,&amp;quot; says Business Casual. &amp;quot;China makes the UK look Third World.&amp;quot; By this time the table is a swirl of expats coming and going, about a dozen in all. Almost all were previously married and had ex-wives who lost their husbands to the Chinese market.  Another Englishman gives a quick lesson in economics and China in general, telling me all about how back home there&amp;#039;s this place that used to make these tile bricks; the problem was, they lasted for eighty years. The Chinese make their bricks for cheap, and theirs only last eighteen months, which means in eighteen months you have to buy more bricks, thus it&amp;#039;s good for the economy because it keeps everybody with a job. The guy that makes them, the guy that sells them, the guy that buys them, and the guy that installs them. Like my ex-bike, I say. &amp;quot;Is that why everything I buy from China falls apart so fast?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Exactly! It keeps everybody with a job.&amp;quot;   Feeling sorry for the guy who made the high-quality bricks that lasted for eighty years, I ask if this is a bad thing, since that guy is now out of work thanks to not being able to compete with cheap labor (or, if you think about it, $1.50 a day is essentially slave labor). &amp;quot;No,&amp;quot; Business Casual says after a swig from his beer, &amp;quot;it&amp;#039;s good competition.&amp;quot; Directly behind me is a huge white boat that&amp;#039;s now immobile thanks to being sunk into the ground and converted into a hotel, and he points to the boat and tells me that this is the place where Deng Xiaoping gave the speech essentially saying wealth was not a bad thing after all. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not? Well, what about communism?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;China is not a communist country, it&amp;#039;s a socialist country as well as a police state,&amp;quot; Rugby Shirt says. &amp;quot;They might not have any rights, but they definitely have more freedom here.&amp;quot; We drink to that. No rights! More freedom! While taking a big swig of my beer I think about that one long and hard. Yes, there&amp;#039;s definitely a bit more freedom here in China than in the States, like you have the freedom to drive your car on the wrong side of the road if you want to here. Whether you have a right to drive on the wrong side of the road is another philosophical question, but the Chinese totally feel free to do it. And the expats are on to something. For a police state, there is a lawless quality to this place. But when you come under the law, watch out. &amp;quot;Does this century belong to China?&amp;quot; I ask the table.  Yes, emphatically, they all agree. &amp;quot;The world really hasn&amp;#039;t seen anything yet,&amp;quot; says a fat American in a T-shirt and shorts.  As the hostess flirts heavily with one of my tablemates who is devouring an order of ribs, Ribs says, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s the finish of one historical cycle and the beginning of another.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;The Chinese actually have a long-term plan,&amp;quot; says a friend of Fat American&amp;#039;s, also wearing a T-shirt and shorts. &amp;quot;They admit to an 8 percent growth rate, but in actuality it&amp;#039;s somewhere near 28 percent, and they have no desire at all to slow down. The only problem they&amp;#039;re having is too much growth too fast, which creates a lot of pollution. You know, they plan to close the factories for three days before the Olympics to clear the air a bit.&amp;quot;  After a few beers, Jessie advises me to take it easy and maybe slow down a bit, which is a good idea, so I thank these gentlemen for their time, and after closing my tab, it is time to go. I feel good, so I ask my guide to take me to the street that the expats told me a little bit about, where all the hookers are.  &amp;quot;You want to go to Working Girl Street?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Yes,&amp;quot; I tell her. On our way there we pass by some fancy outdoor Western-style restaurants, patios and sculpted gardens, and shortly after passing several of those and only a couple blocks away, we turn down this really dark alley onto a dimly lit street, where thousands of Christmas lights hang from the windows and storefronts of all the brothels.  There are a lot of them, a dozen or so outside and inside of every brothel, some standing alone, some in groups, and some sitting down on white plastic chairs, all of whom stare silently, intently at me with that same blank expression that San Francisco Tenderloin hookers give you when you enter their area of operation past midnight.  My guide laughs when my reaction to this sight is to just stare at it in awe and say, &amp;quot;Wow.&amp;quot;  She tells me that since I am with a girl, they will not approach me, but if I ventured down here by myself, I would be swarmed by all of them for a date as well as for my money. Several I notice are very attractive. My guide asks me politely if I want to go inside with one of them, and she tells me that she will wait for me outside and hold on to my backpack while I go in.  The first thing that comes to mind is this saying I heard while in the Army, &amp;quot;What goes on in the field stays in the field,&amp;quot; and seconds felt like minutes as I stood there remembering that.  With the warm breeze blowing the Christmas lights I tell her, &amp;quot;Naw, let&amp;#039;s go.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Are you sure?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Yeah.&amp;quot; Not worth it. My flight from Hong Kong back to Los Angeles is thirteen hours, and I don&amp;#039;t want to spend it wondering what that burning sensation was all about and going in and out of the lavatory every fifteen minutes to check for sores on my junk.  While walking down the street, I notice that the only people walking in and out of these dark little dens are Westerners. Chinese people not allowed, Jessie says. &amp;quot;They get turned away, because they don&amp;#039;t have much money.&amp;quot;  Prostitution in China is illegal, but again, I get the impression that they allow it to go on because it brings in money to their economy, to these women, a lot of whom I&amp;#039;ve heard give some to their families.  After that we both feel hungry, so we walk over to a French restaurant where Jessie has a gift certificate. On the way there we pass by another white guy holding hands with a Chinese girl who doesn&amp;#039;t look sixteen. While chitchatting over candlelight at a table in the back, she tells me that she now works out and shows me her gym-membership card and is embarrassed by the face she&amp;#039;s making in the photo. I pull out my old Army ID card and show her that I&amp;#039;m making the same face -- the thousand-yard stare. She looks at the card and tells me of an old Chinese saying, &amp;quot;If you join the Army, you will regret it for three years, but if you don&amp;#039;t, you&amp;#039;ll regret it for the rest of your life.&amp;quot; I tell her that sounds about right.  I really did not want to do this, but being an addict with a nasty habit I had no choice but to support globalization and walk into a Starbucks for my morning fix of coffee. The whole coffee craze hasn&amp;#039;t taken off quite yet in Shenzhen, because at eight in the morning the place was empty. &amp;quot;Are you guys open?&amp;quot; I asked the guy behind the counter.  His name was Tony and he spoke English, or at least had a working knowledge of it, and he said that they were, so I asked why it was so dead at 8:00 A.M., and he told me that people usually didn&amp;#039;t show up till later. As people walked by on their way to either work or to shop, Tony came outside with a towel to wipe off a couple tables. When he got to my table, he asked where I was from and then asked if I would like to hang out with him after work so that he could practice his English on me. I told him that would be great, and at 7:00 P.M. I went back to get him. He suggested we go to his place and watch a movie or something.  On the way there he pointed out to me all the tall office buildings that he had to deliver coffee to and that it was always for- eigners who ordered the coffee. I asked him if he liked his job, and he said it was okay, but what he really wanted one day was an &amp;quot;office job.&amp;quot;  His apartment was up on the thirty-third floor. Once inside of his apartment, after he unlocked the door, I totally forgot that I was stepping foot into an Asian household and I walked straight in, took a look around, and said, &amp;quot;Yo, this place is awesome!&amp;quot; while he nearly fainted and gasped, &amp;quot;Stop! No! Please!&amp;quot; pointing at my Vans.  After apologizing and quickly removing my footwear, I went back to inspecting. His place was tiny, but he had a great view of Shenzhen, and the place was absolutely spotless -- like the hotel maid just came in and cleaned it and afterward it was able to pass the harshest military room inspection. Even the pillows on his bed were set perfectly at an angle. I asked him if the room always looked this way, and he gave me a look like, Of course, why wouldn&amp;#039;t it always look like this? He said he didn&amp;#039;t know how much the rent was for a place like this, it was his sister&amp;#039;s, she owned it, and he was just living there temporarily.  He pulled out his cell phone and showed me pics of him in Shanghai and Beijing, as well as the old brick building in his hometown where he grew up, told me it was more than two hundred years old, and a couple pics of his sister&amp;#039;s wedding, her and the groom happily smiling together in holy matrimony, with a lot of really poor-looking people circling around them in the background. I pointed this out to him and he told me that where he is from is &amp;quot;really poor.&amp;quot; He then fired up a comedy in the DVD player, something with a strong American Pie influence, and he must have sensed that I didn&amp;#039;t find it funny, because I wasn&amp;#039;t laughing. Other than modern design, nothing pisses me off more than a waste of film, so he took the movie out of the DVD player and while placing another DVD into the player asked, &amp;quot;You like karaoke? I felt my heart rate go up as I lied, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s all right.&amp;quot; I then telepathically started speaking to God, &amp;quot;Oh sweet Jesus, please don&amp;#039;t let this happen -- please don&amp;#039;t make me sing! I don&amp;#039;t care that I&amp;#039;m in China and nobody will know about this, I don&amp;#039;t want to do it! Please, God! Noooooo!&amp;quot; As the karaoke DVD started up with a video montage of scenes from America, there goes the Statue of Liberty, all the sudden I found myself sweating as he told me that he always wished that he could go there, and asked if I have been. I told him that I have, and while that one Celine Dion song came on, they showed a crowded street scene in New York, looked to me like the Wall Street area, and he read my mind when he asked, &amp;quot;Is everybody in America -- you know...&amp;quot; while motioning with his hands the size of a really obese person.  &amp;quot;You mean fat?&amp;quot; Before answering I looked back at the tiny television screen to make sure, and then nodded back, &amp;quot;Yes, that is totally true. Compared to the people here, everybody in America is fat.&amp;quot; Which is true, and one of the reasons why I suspect modern fashion to be so popular here in China. The people at NAAFA (National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance; if you don&amp;#039;t believe me, just Google it) might be offended by my glibness. He then kept on asking me over and over again if I liked to sing karaoke, and I kept on telling him no, but to be polite told him that if he wanted to, to just go ahead and do it and that nobody was stopping him. But that wasn&amp;#039;t okay, and the tension there on the sofa was like sitting next to a girl on a first date not knowing whether she&amp;#039;s going to kiss you or if you should kiss her first, and my body was screaming at me that I need not a drink but to get drunk, like right now. I could tell he really wanted to sing karaoke, but he didn&amp;#039;t want to by himself, we had to do it together.  I was fucked, and I had to think fast, so the compromise I quickly worked out was that if he wanted to sing, to just go ahead and sing and I fibbed that I&amp;#039;d just jump on in, which I knew I wouldn&amp;#039;t, not in a million years. So then he started singing, &amp;quot;Near, far, wherever you are...&amp;quot; while constantly looking back at me like, Hey dude, when you gonna jump in? His voice was about as good as mine, which is not good, so as I counted my blessings that none of my friends and family were here to witness this happen, up there on the thirty-third floor in some building in Shenzhen, China, I started singing the song from Titanic with a guy I met earlier at a Starbucks. After that, before putting our shoes back on, we took the emergency-exit stairs up onto his roof and stared out over Shenzhen. Off in the distance you could see Hong Kong peeking its head out at China and underneath us the city, with its hundreds of construction cranes stalking the landscape like dinosaurs.  The heavy metal music of construction is all around you as you walk the streets down there, and you can&amp;#039;t help but feel, see, and hear the city expand with every step you take. &amp;quot;The number of university students in China has doubled since 2000, to 23 million -- more matriculants than in any other nation in the world. This dramatic growth, coupled with the nation&amp;#039;s rapid economic development, has made China an educational frontier, what one American university president called &amp;quot;the Klondike of higher education,&amp;quot; and universities the world over are scrambling to form partnerships with their Chinese counterparts.&amp;quot; -- The Wilson Quarterly The law student spoke English passably. Several times I&amp;#039;d write down a question on a piece of paper and have her respond back by writing an answer below it.  We sat down together on a campus park bench and she told me that she was originally from Beijing and is a law student here at Shenzhen University. She&amp;#039;s only lived in Shenzhen for a couple years, and tells me that she knows very little of it, and that it is a &amp;quot;passing city,&amp;quot; existing only for economic growth and industry -- good for China, she said, but &amp;quot;Shenzhen has no culture of its own.&amp;quot;  I thanked her for her time and went over to a table by the student store and smoked cigarettes while studying the campus radical with the Andy Warhol purse passing out flyers. Some French students told me I needed to talk to the girl who was head of the English Language Club, a campus group that gets together to practice English. She was headed to class but agreed to meet up with me same time, same place, the following day to take me to a neighboring village.  The next day, when we got to the village, I pointed to a blue metal sign posted on a wall that seems to be posted everywhere you go here, and asked her what it said. She said that it said something about how you were under surveillance.  &amp;quot;Really? Wow, you guys have those, too?&amp;quot; She asked if we had signs like that back in America, and I told her no, in America they just watch you and listen to your phone calls without being so kind as to notify you. Sharing something in common made us feel good, and we happily walked on, past a sign posted by a quaint factory that was advertising for workers. It didn&amp;#039;t say how much the job paid, but that they were hiring females only -- young preferred, and that you needed to work six days a week, five days regular pay, but on the sixth day you get extra.  &amp;quot;Why just women?&amp;quot; I ask.  &amp;quot;I guess that it probably because females pay more attention to details and are better with hands than males, and thus better workers in the factories,&amp;quot; she said. This was probably true. I&amp;#039;ve worked on an assembly line not once but twice where all I had to do basically was place computer chips on a chip board. The first time I did this, I didn&amp;#039;t last too long because I daydreamed about a better tomorrow so much that I fucked up so many times that I got fired. (The person that fired me was my own father.)  During my second tour on the assembly line, I quit during a lunch break. I had an epiphany that if you trained a monkey to do my job and fed it bananas all day, it could do my job and probably do it better than I could. So I quit.  I told her that hiring only females was &amp;quot;sexist,&amp;quot; and that (unless it&amp;#039;s a strip club) you had to hire both males and females in America. This confused her.  &amp;quot;Really?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Yup.&amp;quot; We walked over to a tea concession, and for some reason one of the brands of tea had the John Deere logo printed on the box. This was by far the most interesting copyright infringement I&amp;#039;d come across in Shenzhen, and I saw a lot of them. We walked on in silence for a while, and then I asked her if she knew about what happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989.  &amp;quot;No,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;What happened?&amp;quot; If China is now the most potent economic engine in the world, and by many measures it is, then Shenzhen is the id of the Chinese economy, uninterrupted by art or culture, unfettered by conscience. But for a country with such a carnivorous brand of capitalism, China, the Chinese people, are very kind to strangers, more so than anyone I&amp;#039;ve ever met. Out of nowhere, people ask if they can help you.  As I was standing there on the busy sidewalk, staring up at all the huge skyscrapers all around me, thinking to myself the same exact thing as when I stare up at a modern building in Anytown, U.S. A., which is: Goddamn, that thing is ugly, I heard a voice from behind me ask if I was lost and needed some help. I turned around to see who it was -- early twenties, white shirt, black tie and slacks, holding a bunch of papers in his hand. I said no, that I was just checking out the buildings. He introduced himself as Calvin, pointed at the tall green one, and said that he worked there as a clerk for an insurance company.  Interesting. I used to work as a file clerk at an insurance company. Calvin was nineteen years old when he decided to move to Shenzhen four years ago, from a small town east of Beijing where there weren&amp;#039;t a lot of jobs or opportunities. He told me that every year that goes by he misses his parents more and more, but that he couldn&amp;#039;t go back home because the only job for him there is washing dishes. Those were the only types of jobs available there, and back home if he was lucky he&amp;#039;d be making 800 to 1,000 yuan a month, but here he&amp;#039;s making around 1,800 yuan, or about $235. His hometown also never changes when he goes back and visits, and Shenzhen changes every day, and everyone here lives in a small space. &amp;quot;If we don&amp;#039;t have money we will die, so we have to work hard, that is a reality.&amp;quot;  His English was pretty good, almost conversational, and he seemed really intelligent. When not at work he takes classes on the side, wants to be an English major, so it was a shock to find out he didn&amp;#039;t go to college, as well as to hear him say, &amp;quot;College kids don&amp;#039;t know reality or the working world. All they know is getting money from their parents.&amp;quot; I liked this guy&amp;#039;s attitude, so I asked him what his dream was, since obviously it probably wasn&amp;#039;t being a clerk. He told me in Shenzhen people only focus on making money, which he felt was not a good thing, and his dream was to maybe one day move to Australia or the United States and become a travel guide. Really? When he told me this, I decided to give him his first job, and asked if it&amp;#039;d be okay to buy him dinner in exchange for showing me around the town a bit after work. He agreed and at 7:00 P.M. sharp we meet up at a nearby restaurant, which is packed, and we take a seat at a middle table where all the chairs are sized for kindergartners, and order the beef and broccoli.  He tells me that the Chinese soul is being lost thanks to the fast economic development and modernization, and that it is happening way too fast. Not only that, there&amp;#039;s no change of season here in Shenzhen because it&amp;#039;s sunny and warm year-round, so there&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;no distinctive feelings&amp;quot; when the seasons come and go, because they don&amp;#039;t, which reminds me of Los Angeles.  When our food arrives, he tells me that he doesn&amp;#039;t think chopsticks are too environmentally friendly and that they are very wasteful because people only use them once and then throw them away. I never thought of that and nod in agreement, touched by his concern for the environment. This was a first.  I dig in by asking why American fast food is so popular in China, and he tells me that it&amp;#039;s because it&amp;#039;s a symbol of American culture, they think it&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;cool,&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;so many young men take their dates there. I liked eating American fast food when I was younger, but now I know it&amp;#039;s garbage food and not regularly I eat them.&amp;quot;  I say that maybe they&amp;#039;re eating fast food because maybe it&amp;#039;s a break from the Chinese food, like if I ate Mexican food every day... wait a minute, scratch that -- I could probably pull that off, but like, say, if I ate Korean food every day, I&amp;#039;d probably get sick of that and want a burger every now and then. He tells me that&amp;#039;s not the case here, and his example was an Indian-food restaurant down the street from where he lives, &amp;quot;not successful, it&amp;#039;s only so-so. Not as popular as McDonalds or KFC, they are symbols of American culture that why popular.&amp;quot; He had a point, and after taking time out so we could stop talking and eat, I asked what he liked to do for fun. He tells me watch DVDs, go running, and surf the Internet, his two favorite sites being cnn.com and 163.com, a popular news Web site in China.  I was the only foreigner in the place, so there was kind of a spotlight on our table, and so in a hushed voice I then ask him if he&amp;#039;s aware of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and he nods his head yes, and tells me that a lot of people, especially the younger ones, do not know about it. He found out what little he knows from his parents, as well as from a cabdriver three years ago, the guy was there when it happened and saw tanks run over people, as well as police and soldiers destroying the cameras of all the foreigners who were there taking pictures.  He tells me that the Chinese news only reports the good, and never the bad, and that they always report the bad news in other countries. He tells me that this is one of the reasons why he wants to come to America, because the news there &amp;quot;don&amp;#039;t lie.&amp;quot; I almost choked on my beef and broccoli when he told me this, and after excusing myself I tell him that this wasn&amp;#039;t entirely true, that we lie all the time, it&amp;#039;s just that we&amp;#039;ve figured out that there&amp;#039;s more than one way to do so. This seems to confuse him, and he makes sure that I understand what he&amp;#039;s trying to say. He leans in and whispers, &amp;quot;If I went down to the police station right now and told them that I don&amp;#039;t agree with the party, they would tie me up and arrest me on the spot -- just like that.&amp;quot; He leans back and looks at me as if to ask, Would they do that to you in America? After our meal, we make our way over to the Luo Hu shopping district. Passing by shops where behind the glass the happy-ending massage girls disguise themselves as beauticians. Through the narrow streets where laundry hangs between every window of every apartment. Like New York City, everybody here in Shenzhen is living right on top of one another. I ask my friend how big his pad is, and he steps it off for me, about eleven by eleven feet. I tell him that&amp;#039;s not too bad, that I&amp;#039;ve lived in places that small before, and he agrees that it&amp;#039;s not too bad, that he and his roommate share it and the rent.  We walk on and sit down together on some steps in front of a playground where a dozen or so kids are playing. He tells me about a coworker of his who has a son in kindergarten, and in his class of fifty-five students, only five of them are girls. He points to the playground in front of us and says, &amp;quot;Look!&amp;quot; There are twelve boys and only one girl.  Shocked, I ask him why that is. He says he doesn&amp;#039;t know, but that his government tells them that it&amp;#039;s because of the high level of stress and all the pesticides in their food. &amp;quot;You don&amp;#039;t actually believe that shit, do you?&amp;quot; I ask. He shrugs. &amp;quot;They say that why.&amp;quot; I tell how in America we put all sorts of crazy shit into our food products, and every American that I know of is stressed out all the time, but our classrooms are still yin and yang -- fifty-fifty. So there must be another reason. I mean, hasn&amp;#039;t he heard that families in America have been adopting up all the discarded Chinese girls for a while now? And what about sex selection by abortion?  I got my pad and wrote down the word abortion, and turned it to show Calvin. &amp;quot;Yes! You&amp;#039;re right,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;Especially in villages in China, when a family has a baby, some illegal doctors check to see if it&amp;#039;s a male or female. If it&amp;#039;s a female -- in big cities it is illegal, but in villages many doctors do it secretly, for the money.&amp;quot; I apologize for leaving on such a negative note. At the metro station, it is sad saying goodbye to Calvin. We promise each other that if he ever comes to America we&amp;#039;ll hang, and if I ever come back to China, which I tell him I hope to do, we&amp;#039;ll hang. After promises to each other that both of us know will never happen, we say our goodbyes and wish each other luck. He stands there and waits the whole time, waving goodbye and watching me as I pass through the turnstile at the metro station and leave down the escalator onto the train that will take me back to the end of the line.  When I go home, Los Angeles looks vacant. I walk around for four days straight wondering where everybody is, and if it is a holiday or something that I don&amp;#039;t know about. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a3188/china0807/>