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■"A Booming Coast Breathes New Life Into China's Inland: Cities Benefit From Highways And Foreign Investment: Wal-Mart Sets Up Shop; Opening Day Brings 100,000," by Andrew Browne and Kathy Chen, Wall Street Journal, 17 October 2005, p. A1.
Fascinating story on my daughter Vonne Mei Ling's (then Zou Yong Ling) "adopted hometown" of Nanchang (pronounced Nan-chung), capital city of the largely impoverished interior province of Jiangxi (Gee-ang-shee). I say "adopted hometown" because that is where we first met and adopted her by Chinese law (later getting her immigrant visa in Guangzhou and then re-adopting her by U.S. law in Rhode Island. Vonne Mei was abandoned a day after her birth in a village located about four hours north of Nanchung (Yongfeng, population of about 400,000; big "villages" in China). We don't know where she was born, but obviously we suspect it was either in Yongfeng or nearby.
Nanchang is a backwater, fairly sleepy provincial capital of merely 5 million citizens, which would make it a top-five city in the U.S., on par with a Houston. But in China, Nanchang is so small that it does not make the national weather maps in the daily newspapers (putting it in the range of Terre Haute or Fort Wayne).
So huge, so poorly connected to the outside world (there were no Westerners in this city to speak of, and really no foreigners whatsoever), that it's a huge deal when foreign stores begin appearing, like the revolutionary impact of a Wal-Mart store in downtown Nanchang, just off the main square.
Long-time readers of my blog will remember my description of this store, and what it was like to walk around with a Chinese baby I just met 48 hours earlier on my hip, the only white person for as far as the eye could see (which in any crowded Chinese scene, ain't very far; every time my wife and I would separate in the store I felt like kissing her goodbye with, "No matter what, you will survive and I will find you!" like Daniel Day-Lewis in "Last of the Mohicans").
And anyone who reads my current piece in Esquire ("The Chinese Are Our Friends," November) will see how I repurposed that material in the piece. Strong impression, yes. Some serious rule-set changes for a previously isolated provincial capital. Definitely worth a front-pager on the WSJ. To me, it's a sign that the future of Chinese outsourcing (yes, that process has already begun) will end up being as much a boon to its interior provinces as it is to small regional neighbors.
Again, great read.
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