I went back to my hometown today. Desolation everywhere — autumn wind, autumn rain, the season grinding the spirit down. Hardly any of the shops along the street were still open, the neon-and-liquor glow of years past has vanished who knows where, and the elementary school I once attended has been shut down.

The real China is not on the evening news, nor in the movies and TV dramas. It lives in the county towns and townships whose names you have never even heard. There are no spectacles there, only ordinary days.