in all weathers collecting grass and dried husks for the family fire.

If there wasn’t enough to keep the fire going, the temperature fell

rapidly, and any other fuel was too expensive to contemplate.

The mud walls were inadequate and during the rainy season the

house was both wet and cold, twisting Tai Po’s joints with rheumatism.

In summer it was hot and humid, and the family baked inside

the little hut, so like the rest of the village, they preferred to sleep

outside when the season was at its height.

When I travelled to Guangzhou in 2002 I stayed in a hotel that

was housed in a skyscraper, flanked by a mall through which an

endless parade of well-dressed and affluent shoppers paraded in the

latest designer labels. The complex stood in the middle of a

spaghetti junction of roads that were jammed with cars belching

exhaust fumes. It seemed to me as though China had accelerated

through several centuries’ worth of change in just a few short

decades; it would have been unrecognisable to Leung and Tai Po.

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