It’s one thing to hear and read about China’s economic boom the last 10-15 years, and another to see it for yourself. We got a good glimpse of that on our trip.

• In general, the people in China do seem to be better off than they were 10-15 years ago. We were mostly in big cities, which have a much more cosmopolitan feel to them than the last time I was in China. Many of my relatives have changed homes since we last saw them, and every one of them is in a better (in some cases, much better) residence than before. We did go to one small town, Yangshuo, and spent a lot of time driving past countryside villages, and even there, the quality of life seems to have improved drastically. Gone are most of the old, one-level village shacks, replaced by a growing number of highrises and a plethora of two-story homes that bear a striking resemblance to suburban family homes in the U.S. Imagine that: The prototypical dream home in America is peasant housing in China.

Viewing Shanghai from the air, you can tell where the development (and highrises) begin.
• The rate of development is incredible. When we landed in Guangzhou, our airport was located in what used to be a village on the remote outskirts of the city. Many places that I or my parents remembered as rural areas have been absorbed into the city as it pushes outward, and the same thing is happening around all the big cities we visited. At this rate, maybe in 20 years China will consist only of a couple dozen megametropolis and their suburbs.
• The rapid development has made real estate a more precious commodity than ever. Almost all the highrises on the side of streets lease out their first floors as commercial space, and residential spaces occupy the upper levels. One of my aunts took us to a big toy market where they have gone from not being able to give space away years ago to now charging an arm and a leg for the space barely larger than  a cubicle. One of my cousins took us around Panyu, one of those former villages that have become suburbs of Guangzhou, where the main industry has gone from fishing to real estate.

A common sight in China: Businesses occupying the street-level floor of residential buildings.

• Our tour guide/driver in Shanghai told us this tidbit: Because of the Chinese government’s arbitrary effort to keep oil prices stable, gas prices in China didn’t jump much when prices in America shot through the roof, and when prices in the States plummeted, China’s gas cost didn’t fall much either.
• The economic crisis is definitely a concern here. The impact hasn’t been as great as it is in America, but it’s on people’s minds. It’s in the news daily, and it was a topic of conversation everywhere we went. Every one of our tour guides talked about housing values falling as a result of the economic downturn (which kind of made us feel a little bad in the “sorry our country’s poor lending practices is screwing up your economy too” way). Over dinner, my cousins ask us about how we are being impacted and admit that there are worries about layoffs at their companies. In my home province of Guangdong, there are towns where factories that rely heavily on exports have shut down or cut back severely.