The sight startled visitors. There, in the center of Longzhao, a prospering village on the outskirts of the city of Chengdu, were the crumbling remains of a mud-brick house, its thatched roof scattered around it like straw dandruff. The hut, obviously abandoned, was surrounded by freshly constructed brick-and-concrete apartments. The eyesore was cleared away a few weeks ago, but why had it remained so long? "We kept it there so that people would remember what it was like five years ago," explains Ru Furong, director of Longzhao's garment factory. "We used it to educate the young as to how bad...
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