The Big City

From the shiny skyscrapers glittering in the sunlight to the 8-lane bridges, Urumqi gives you the feeling of being part of something larger than yourself. The flashing neon lights and hugely garish electronic billboards pulse with life and energy, and the promise and hope for a better future. The massive traffic circles with an endless parade of cars and busses speeding past create an ambience of being busy: I am busy, you are busy, and therefore we are worthy.

You see big buildings, big cars, big roads, big bridges. It’s all very impressive and phallic. You see the skyscrapers and cars and think "development!" and when you think "development!", you think advancement and progress. You see people, smiling and drinking milk tea, playing on their iPhones, taking selfies and shopping at the market, sitting down for a fried chicken sandwich prepared in less than 1 minute. You see these things and think, "development!"

But when you look a little closer, you see the bags under people’s eyes and the wrinkles on their forehead, their shoulders slumped and their spines round, their legs limping or waddling from pain. You see a grandmother picking plastic bottles out of the trash for pennies, and the young mother who plays on her phone a little too often because she is posting pictures of her daughter thousands of miles away on her WeChat Moments. You ask them about their children and their parents, and you find they are separated from their closest family members. You look into their eyes and you see desire and dreams and hope for the future... But you also see desperation and despair. You see exhaustion of barely surviving. This is the cost of development. Do the ends justify the means?