Ryan Pyle Blog: Taking Back the Golf Courses

Hello.

I wanted to direct you all to a new bit of work I've completed with writer Dan Washburn. The piece is about the government taking back land from illlegal golf courses. Interesting times in the development of China. Please take a look at Dan's article, wild stuff.

LINK: http://www.slate.com/id/2246914/pagenum/2

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The Forbidden Game
China's on-again, off-again war against golf.

By Dan Washburn

Posted Tuesday, March 9, 2010, at 10:04 AM ET

JIANSHAN VILLAGE, Zhejiang, China—Last November, when the Chinese government held a press conference to announce its most recent crackdown on illegal land use, it highlighted five investigations. Three involved heavy industry: a coking plant, a plastics factory, and a rare-earth metals mine. The other two were about golf courses, and they were the ones that made the headlines. "Golf defies rules to gain ground," screamed China Daily.

While the announcement raised a few eyebrows in China's golf industry, it was easy to brush it off as another toothless threat from Beijing. Almost all of the nation's 600 or so completed golf courses are illegal in some way. In order to operate as a golf business in China, you need to have an official license. Since 2004, however, there's been a moratorium on course construction in the country, making the acquisition of such a license impossible. Nevertheless, about 400 new golf facilities have opened their gates in the past six years.

The most generous estimates put the number of golfers in China at a few million—statistically zero percent of the population. While the game is growing in popularity, in many developers' eyes golf courses exist primarily as a means to sell the million-dollar homes that get built around them. On a recent trip to China, a representative of an American course design firm compared the goings-on here to the Oklahoma land run combined with the California gold rush. China, the nation that banned golf development, had somehow emerged as the only country in the world still in the midst of a golf boom.

That was before the government started digging up fairways. The bulldozers arrived at dawn in early December. There were more than a dozen lined up outside the gate of the Anji King Valley Country Club, 140 miles southwest of Shanghai. The convoy drove past the fountain, the bronze knight, and the Tudor-style clubhouse, and arrived at the multimillion-dollar 18-hole course that had been open for little more than a year and was scheduled to play host to a Ladies European Tour event this October. For 10 days, the excavators ripped up turf and snapped irrigation pipes in the soil below.

King Valley's punishment is the harshest thus far, but some in the industry believe government inspectors (the "Beijing golf police," as they have become known on the ground) could make their way throughout the country, one province at a time. Since the beginning of the year, the golf police have been frisking finished and unfinished golf courses throughout central China's Sichuan province, a hotbed of construction activity. Several projects there have been put on hold pending further review.

It makes sense that the "rich man's game" would get special scrutiny. While the Communists lifted their ban on the sport in 1984, golf still suffers an image problem in China, where a weekend round costs $160 on average. Critics have contended that such a high-consumption pastime runs counter to several of President Hu Jintao's primary concerns—among them, rural land rights and the widening gap between rich and poor. Farm land is a precious commodity in a country that must feed 21 percent of the world's population with less than 8 percent of its arable land. China has lost more than 30,000 square miles of agricultural land since 1996, and its current total of about 470,000 square miles is getting dangerously close to the 463,323-square-mile baseline the government believes necessary to sustain its massive population. As such, while golf-related construction accounted for a tiny fraction of the reported 42,000 cases of illegal land usage in China last year, it's good PR for the Communist government to say it's tackling such an elitist activity.

Ironically, it was the Chinese government's reluctance to embrace golf—or at least come up with a set of regulations intended to standardize its inevitable growth—that allowed things to get out of control. China doesn't even know how many golf courses exist within its borders. At the press conference in November, officials at the Ministry of Land and Resources said they were using satellite imagery to get a handle on the number. Back in 2004, when the moratorium was announced, state media reported that only 10 of China's then 176 known courses had received proper approvals from Beijing. One golf developer who wished to remain anonymous—this happens often when reporting on the legally nebulous word of golf construction in China—said the market remains "in chaos," with local governments continuing to approve golf projects despite not having the right to do so.

This was the case in Anji County, where King Valley Country Club is located. Anji had always been one of the poorer parts of Zhejiang province, with bamboo forests its lone claim to fame (some were featured in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). The area's top government official was fond of telling people he had two dreams for Anji: a university and a golf course. Ask anyone in Jianshan village, where that second dream came to fruition, and they'll tell you that King Valley was a pet project of the local government, designed to attract well-heeled patrons from nearby cities like Hangzhou and Shanghai to the impoverished countryside.

There is some evidence that this effort was successful. While Jianshan remains tied to the past—locals still refer to their "production teams," a holdover term from the pre-reform days of China's communal farming system—a walk through the village reveals many signs of growth: small factories manufacturing decorative bamboo wall-coverings, kitschy hotels and restaurants geared at tourists, and construction sites for new housing complexes. All of this followed the 2005 arrival of King Valley.

The official reason for King Valley's bulldozing is simple: The course's builders didn't have the proper approvals to develop the entirety of their 400-acre plot. (Nearly 35 acres of the tract were farmland.) Dig a little deeper, and things don't look that straightforward. A dirt path along a fence offers views of the golf course's back nine, where most fairways now look like freshly plowed fields awaiting planting season. But a closer inspection reveals peculiarities. All of the greens and tee boxes remain untouched, the cuts around them following neat lines. The greens, and what remains of the fairways, are watered and mowed daily. The cart paths are still there. So are the buildings and the landscaping. Smaller shrubs are wrapped in white plastic to protect them from the winter cold. (Click here for a companion photo essay on King Valley's bulldozing.)

"Don't worry—the course is not going to become farmland," one of several workers who remain at King Valley said reassuringly during a visit in January. He said they were repairing the irrigation system and, since the greens were not destroyed, the course could be rebuilt very quickly. How could this be possible? "The local government has certain guanxi with our company," he said.

That guanxi, or favorable relationship, would seem to be strained these days. When Beijing's focus turned to King Valley, local officials ran for the hills. Many denied knowledge that a golf course existed inside the "Anji China Ecotourism and Fitness Center," as King Valley is officially known. (To get around the 2004 moratorium on course construction, "golf" never appears in planning documents for golf facilities in China.) Their case was flimsy: King Valley played host to a stop on China's domestic pro golf tour last summer; it's the official training center of the provincial golf team; and the large sign the local government installed beside the highway included the stylized silhouette of a man swinging a golf club. "Government officials go there all the time," said a village shopkeeper. "Only a ghost would believe their claims."

Despite the workers' assertions at the course, sources familiar with the situation say the company behind the project—Hangzhou-based real estate firm Handnice Group—is in no hurry to pay for the necessary repairs. Many in Jianshan believe the course destruction was a calculated move by local officials, a grand display intended to shield them from punishment from Beijing. Without assurances that the project is fully legal, the existence of a course like King Valley will always be dependent upon the word of local bureaucrats.

The Handnice Group is no innocent bystander here. The risks associated with opening a golf course in China, though seemingly minimal in recent years, are no secret. And while official land designations in rural areas often change on the whims of those in power, it was obvious villagers were farming on a portion of the land that is now a golf course. In fact, the company paid close to $1.2 million in fines for illegal land use between 2006 and 2008. But after each fine, sources say, the local government urged them to carry on with construction. The fines were viewed as a cost of doing business.

As is often the case with major development projects in China, hundreds of villagers were relocated to make room for King Valley. This is typically presented to farmers as a choice, but more than one Jianshan resident admitted their departure from the land was "kind of enforced." Reports suggest this process got messy. The most heated disputes arose over compensation—they usually do—and the noise surrounding a few key blowups may have gotten the project on the central government's short list for investigation.

Because the state owns all land in China, the developer pays the local government, which then distributes payouts to the villagers. Much of the money gets caught in the government filter—recent data suggests more than half of local government revenues come from land sales. One elderly man in Jianshan said the $15,000 settlement he received was not enough to cover the cost of his new home, and that the $200 he receives in "rent" each year from the golf course (where a round can cost $120) is "definitely not enough." He shrugged his shoulders and added, "But what can you do?"

It's unclear what's next for King Valley. When asked for a status update, a worker at the Anji land bureau said only "that's already been dealt with" before hanging up the phone. Another source said "a conclusion has been reached" but it has yet to be made public. Meanwhile, golf course construction in China continues to chug along. One industry veteran, who says his firm has survived "crackdowns" in the past, didn't sound too worried. The number of leads and new projects he discovers during his monthly trips to China remains "astronomical."

"I've been telling people if they shut down 50 percent, even 70 percent, of the projects there are still too many of them," he said. "A hell of a lot of golf courses are still going to be built."

Alice Liu contributed to this report.

Dan Washburn is a Shanghai-based writer. For more on the development of golf in China, visit his Par for China Web site.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2246914/

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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
_______________________________________

Ryan Pyle Blog: New Work – Golf on Hainan Island

Hello,

I recently completed a story for the Financial Times Magazine on a secretive golf course on China’s Hainan Island. The island is developing at hyper speed and government officials are touting the island as a future competitor to Hawaii. Five star hotels and international quality golf courses can be found just about everywhere on Hainan Island.

Dan Washburn wrote a wonderful story and he has been knee deep in golf stories over the last few years. He is even preparing a book on golf and golf development in China. Follow the link below for the story.

FT LINK: Click Here

Article Below:
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Copywrite: Dan Washburn

Golf’s secret boom in Hainan, China
By Dan Washburn

If you are flying into Haikou from the west, you can see it. Sit on the right-hand side of the aircraft and look out of your window. It’s there. Viewed from above, this vast swathe of land may not look like much – fuzzy green vegetation, shadowy pockets of volcanic rock, incongruous veins of reddish brown soil – but in a couple of years it will make history. Locals refer to this area by its code name: Project 791. Soon, most people will know it as Mission Hills Hainan, the largest collection of golf courses in the world.

The scope of the multi-billion-dollar project is staggering. It occupies 80sq km of forest and shrubland – an area the size of Hong Kong island – in north-east Hainan, the island province long touted as China’s answer to Hawaii. Once completed, it will feature 22 golf courses, at a stroke doubling the number on Hainan today. It’s been in the works since 2006 and for more than two years, thousands of workers have been clearing trees, moving soil, building greens, fairways, clubhouses and luxury hotels.

And yet aspects of the project remain as mysterious as the island on which it sits. In fact, the man most closely connected to the Mission Hills venture in Hainan denies its very existence.

When I first met Ken Chu, vice-chairman of Mission Hills Group and one of the most powerful men in China’s burgeoning golf industry, I was wearing yellow plastic bags over my shoes. Our interview was to take place in an $11m villa, one of the many that line the fairways at Mission Hills Golf Club in Shenzhen, the Chinese business hub north of Hong Kong. I was told that everyone who entered the show home must don the protective shoe coverings. Shuffling past a white grand piano I took a seat in a living room whose styling might best be described as neo-Liberace. When Chu arrived, the first thing I noticed was his shoes – stylish, black, leather and uncovered. I stood up to greet the 35-year-old mogul and cheap plastic crackled beneath my feet.

For now, Mission Hills Shenzhen touts itself as the “World’s No. 1”, and Guinness World Records plays along, labelling the 20sq km, 12-course golf club the largest on the planet, even though Nanshan International Golf Club in north-eastern China has 63 more holes. Opened in 1994 by Chu’s billionaire father, Hong Kong businessman David Chu, this is golf on steroids. Each of the 12 courses was designed by one of the biggest names in the sport, from Faldo to Nicklaus to Norman. Mission Hills Shenzhen also features the world’s largest clubhouse, Asia’s largest spa and, for good measure, the continent’s largest tennis centre.

Towards the end of our meeting, I brought up Hainan. I asked Chu how many courses Mission Hills had planned there. It was the first time I saw him flustered. “We, um, it’s not so much on the course development,” he stumbled. “Actually, we haven’t even started. We haven’t even talked about this project. It’s something in the pipeline, in discussion, but it’s not purely on golf. It’s a tourist destination.”

“So, it’s just too early to say anything?” I asked. “Maybe at this stage,” Chu said, “because there’s nothing to talk about.”

This was in July last year. When I travelled to Hainan in August, I discovered that not only was there something worth talking about, but a large part of the project was nearing completion. Six golf courses had been shaped and seeded. Three more – including the showpiece “tournament course” – were even further along. They looked perfectly playable, lush and green, with local women in rattan hats the shape of Tiffany lampshades putting the finishing touches to the white-sand bunkers.

The tournament course is stunning. With its irregular lines and eroded sand traps, it manages to appear rugged and natural, even though there is little natural about it. Incorporated into the design are old, overgrown lava-rock walls and archways left over from the land’s previous occupants, along with some mature lychee, ficus and acacia trees that managed to elude the clear-cutter. The result is a landscape that looks like it has been there for decades, maybe centuries, not months. A drive along the cart path, made from crushed lava rock, has the flavour of a Jurassic safari – that is, until you see the massive hotel and clubhouse looming on the horizon.

It is all remarkably telegenic, and by design. The talk is that in 2011 the Mission Hills Hainan tournament course will become the new location for either golf’s Omega-sponsored World Cup, currently a fixture at Mission Hills Shenzhen, or of the HSBC Champions, the tournament dubbed “Asia’s Major”. That event, with $7m in prize money, draws some of the biggest names in the sport and has been held in Shanghai since its launch in 2005. Professional Golf Association representatives, I was told, have toured Mission Hills Hainan. And Ken Chu flies in every two weeks to monitor progress on the project.

The moans of bullfrogs emanating from the marshland along the 18th fairway are replaced by the ping ping of hammers hitting metal. Chain-smoking labourers, skin brown and weathered by the tropical sun, plug away at the two dramatic structures that form the backdrop to the course’s closing hole. Fashioned in Mediterranean Revival style, they are white with red and black tile roofs.

In reality, this will be the world’s only self-contained golf city. Its 22 courses will cover every style imaginable – from links to desert to Augusta-like perfection – and include some decidedly non-traditional designs. Picture yourself playing into a waterfall, through a cave, around a volcano, or over a replica of the Great Wall. There will be multiple town centres with luxury homes and apartments, hotels and spas, shopping malls and streets lined with restaurants and bars. The Chus are turning countryside into suburbia, no doubt raising surrounding property values and creating thousands of jobs along the way.

But why the reticence when I inquired about the Hainan development? Why does a golf project require a code name? There is a one-word answer to such questions: China. The country’s latest moratorium on golf course construction was brought in more than five years ago, and is still technically in place. In China, golf remains a prohibitively expensive, elitist pursuit – inescapably linked to corruption in the minds of many – and, some believe, its expansion runs counter to several of President Hu Jintao’s primary concerns: among them the environment, the plight of farmers and the widening gap between rich and poor. A project that absorbs 20 million acres of open land and directly affects the lives of tens of thousands of poor rural families is bound to create controversy. For Mission Hills, for now, the less fanfare the better.

Given all that, how could such an audacious project get the go-ahead? Why would someone even consider trying to open a golf club nearly one-and-a-half times the size of Manhattan? And how could construction go virtually unnoticed and unreported for more than a year? There’s an answer to these questions, too, and it is also China. In the years since the government announced its supposed golf course moratorium, the number of courses has nearly trebled to an estimated 600 or so. In China, there is always a way.

And that is especially true in Hainan, where golf is now viewed as a vital part of the province’s development. When modern China’s first golf course opened in 1984, Hainan was four years away from becoming a fully-fledged province, and most mainland Chinese still regarded it with equal parts curiosity and fear. Despite its proximity to the mainland – Haikou, Hainan’s capital, lies just 30km from the southern tip of Guangdong province – for centuries it had been characterised as a typhoon-prone outpost inhabited by mysterious natives, ruthless pirates, banished criminals and exiled officials. Indeed, prior to his expulsion to Hainan in 848, disgraced Tang Dynasty chief minister Li Deyu famously wrote that he was being sent to the “gate of hell”.

The reputation stuck. One Hainan local said that when he arrived on the mainland in the 1980s to attend university, his fellow students were surprised to discover he didn’t have a tail. But it was also during this decade of reform that top-ranking officials began referring to Hainan as China’s “treasure island”, both for its rich natural resources and its sun-blessed, palm-lined beaches. Though poor, backward and corrupt, Hainan had potential, but it seemed no one could agree for what.

As China’s middle class continued to grow, its appeal as a tourist destination came to the fore. And last year, after decades of false starts, the provincial government announced plans to make tourism the “pillar” of the local economy, to rival destinations such as Phuket and Bali. Golf, once banned by the communists as bourgeois, is expected to play a big role in this repositioning. At last count, Hainan – slightly bigger than Belgium – had 22 courses, although many people believe it could easily reach 100 within five years.

While a negligible percentage of the population plays golf, China is one of the few places in the world where golf course construction is booming. “Everyone who is even thinking about golf course design is here in China,” said Haikou-based Richard Mon, vice-president of China operations for Schmidt-Curley Golf Design, the US company behind all 34 of Mission Hills’ China courses. “If you’re not, you don’t have any work. Everywhere else in the world is done.” Golf in modern China is in its infancy – the game here is still four years younger than Sergio Garcia – and the speed of its growth will no doubt be accelerated by its inclusion in the 2016 Olympics, a move that should give the sport some legitimacy in the eyes of the once-sceptical Chinese government.

What’s less certain, though, is whether the provision of 100 golf courses – let alone the 200 to 300 touted by one provincial official – makes sense on Hainan, an island with 8.5 million predominately rural inhabitants, only about 3,000 of whom play. While most Hainan courses are fully booked during the winter peak tourist season, the insufferable heat and relentless rains of summer keep away all but the most dedicated or frugal (greens fees are often heavily discounted during the quiet months). The struggling global economy has also taken a toll on business.

But such quibbles may be missing the larger truth about golf course development in Hainan, and throughout much of China: the number of golf courses built has very little to do with the number of golfers available to play on them. With few exceptions, golf courses exist to help sell luxury villas. Developers do not worry if a course sits empty, as long as the properties around it sell. And so far in Hainan, selling homes has not been a problem. Wealthy bosses from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and central China’s coal belt fly in and buy up the villas, sometimes several at a time, often paying in cash. In China, to own a home on a golf course does not necessarily mean you play the game. It’s more about prestige. Golf, like luxury sedans and handbags, is just another way to project your wealth.

During the planning and proposal stage, however, golf is rarely mentioned. That is how developers get around the supposed national moratorium on building courses. “No one calls it a golf course now,” one industry insider told me. “Instead, it’s a green space or it’s equestrian or it’s an exercise field. They are creative. But the government knows. It’s just all about loopholes.”

For example, in 2008 the China Youth Daily reported that the word “golf” does not appear in Mission Hills’ agreement with the local government to develop in Hainan. According to the newspaper, the document describes a “land consolidation” project that will “improve the production and living standards of the local farmers and promote the building of a new socialist countryside”.

Hainan bills itself as China’s greenest province, and in many ways it is the tropical paradise it is touted to be, a literal breath of fresh air for those travelling in from the mainland. But the past several decades of property development and slash-and-burn agriculture have taken their toll on the island’s ecology. Like many current golf projects on Hainan, the Mission Hills development primarily occupies acreage that the government has classified as huangdi, or “wasteland”. But this only means that the land was either never used by man or is no longer used by man. It doesn’t take into account its ecological merits. “If they only build on true wasteland, then there is no problem,” said one conservationist active in Hainan. “To me, the [Mission Hills] area next to Haikou is not a wasteland. In Hong Kong, that would be a country park, a very nice forest or wilderness park.”

This northern section of the Mission Hills land is less than 30 minutes by car from downtown Haikou and just east of a 108sq km national geological park built around the crater of an extinct volcano. Both properties occupy a region long known as the “lung of Haikou” for its green landscape and fresh air. Nearly three years ago, a Haikou-based pressure group believed it had secured around 825 acres of this land to establish a forest park that would help promote environmental awareness. Its members worked on the project for two years, winning the support of the government, attracting investors and brokering a land deal with local villagers. But suddenly in 2007, the villagers ended talks. And that is when the group’s organisers first heard about Project 791.

“They didn’t even notify us,” a member of the group told me over a pot of Pu’er tea. “The government just told the villagers not to work with us any more. All the years working, the money, the energy, all wasted. It was a devastating hit. It broke our hearts, and we felt so small and insignificant. We knew we could never defeat them. How can you go against the government?” The group was warned not to do anything that might disrupt the Mission Hills project. In Hainan, a domestic non-governmental organisation is never truly non-governmental. A good relationship with the authorities is necessary for survival, and going up against golf, an industry thought to be lining the pockets of many a government official, would not be a wise move. At the Mission Hills site, one completed fairway has already been dubbed the “government hole” due to its popularity with local officials.

The lobby group member did not attempt to hide his frustration. “They call this ecological restoration?” he asked incredulously. “Sure, they might plant a few trees – but they also destroyed a mountain and turned it into a lake.” Ah yes, the mountain. It’s true that while certain species of tree and shrub thrive on this volcanic landscape, the rocky earth is not suitable for most forms of farming. It is also not suitable for building and shaping golf courses, which require a couple of metres of topsoil. The solution? Mission Hills bought a “mountain” several kilometres from the construction site and started digging – until the mountain was a hole in the ground. A wagon train of trucks carted the red earth to the construction site, where it is stored in a huge flat pile that looks like an Arizona plateau.

Like environmental protection, land ownership in rural Hainan is a particularly murky issue. Last year, in a town called Longqiao, villagers protested after discovering the great disparity between what Mission Hills had paid the local government for their land and the amount passed on to them. Some demonstrators flipped a government car, and military police were called in to disperse the crowd. Such public expressions of displeasure are often the only recourse for disgruntled villagers, who usually have no official documents to back up their claim to a piece of land. All they can do is yell – or congregate on fairways brandishing their sickles.

Villagers, told that developers are merely renting their land for 50 years, see through the ruse and view this as their only opportunity to cash in. It happens throughout Hainan. At one course site I visited, locals had hastily built new homes in the construction zone in an effort to claim larger payouts. At another site, where villagers were being compensated for each grave that had to be moved, fresh ones began appearing every morning. Construction on the Mission Hills project was halted for several months in 2008 due to land disputes, and various dust-ups have caused the site’s boundaries to change more than a hundred times since the planning process began.

I spent two days hiking through villages around the Mission Hills site, trying to gauge the mood of the locals, who by and large were warm and friendly, quick to invite a stranger indoors or under a shady tree for a cup of tea or a piece of jackfruit. Most lived in hamlets laid out in maze-like fashion, with narrow stone paths weaving between single-storey, centuries-old homes, with walls of irregularly shaped pieces of lava rock and tiled roofs. More and more villagers are doing away with these old buildings, however, opting instead to use the money they have made by selling land to Mission Hills to build larger, multi-storey homes out of brick or cinder block.

Near the perimeter of the golf site, I met Ma Jiguang, who two days earlier had opened a small shop a hundred yards from where labourers were building high-rise dormitories that would eventually house thousands of Mission Hills employees. Behind his one-room cement structure, the 37-year-old Ma had built a brick wall to mark where he felt his property ended and Mission Hills began. Other than his home back in the village, this was the only piece of land he had left.

“We had fruit trees, so I didn’t want to sell,” Ma said, as weary-looking workers wandered into his shop in search of cold water and beer. “But they had already claimed it and measured it. What could I do? The government tells you the price and no matter if you are willing to sell or not, they take your land anyway. As an ordinary citizen, how can you fight the government officials?”

Ma, like many I spoke to, said that despite the area’s designation as wasteland, the nutrient-rich volcanic soil was ideal for cultivating fruit trees. The region’s lychees were particularly famous and could fetch a good price at market. In all, Ma gave up 10 mu (a Chinese unit of measurement equal to roughly one-sixth of an acre) to the Mission Hills project and the government paid him around RMB200,000 (£18,000), a very large sum for the average Chinese farmer. But Ma knew that his land was worth more – Mission Hills, he claimed, paid the government five times what he had received for it – and he wasn’t sure how he’d earn a living in the future without his orchard. Although some villagers were happy to sell because their land was rocky, Ma told me of one of his friends who had protested and refused. The next day, he claimed, soldiers had arrived at his friend’s property and bulldozed his trees.

A car pulled up on the dirt patch in front of Ma’s store. In walked a man in white shorts, a white golf shirt and flip-flops. It was Ma’s cousin, Li Guanghua, a town-level government official. He assured me that Mission Hills Hainan was going to be bigger and better than the one in Shenzhen. “I have been to the Mission Hills in Shenzhen,” Li announced proudly. He and about 100 other town and village representatives had travelled there on a week-long expenses-paid trip before the land deals had been finalised.

“Do you want to have a look inside?” Li asked, gesturing towards the Mission Hills property. “I’d love to,” I said. “But will we be able to get past security? I hear it’s pretty tight.” Li looked insulted. “Who can stop me?” he scoffed. “Who can stop the government’s car?”

Alice Liu contributed to this story. Some names have been changed to protect identities. Dan Washburn is a Shanghai-based writer.
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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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