Where people live ...

Some how in my mind with a 1.4b population I imagined China to be one large urban area of varying  density. I was therefore somewhat unprepared for the reality.

This is Hong Kong - A vast landscape of high rise, as I expected,  as viewed from Mt Victoria

Hong Kong 

However even in Hong Kong as you go out through the suburbs the towers get lower and more 1950's utilitarian concrete looking.  These are the "state" houses - the British concept of of Govt owned housing - not a model found on mainland China .

Terminology :

• In China its "house" regardless of size or location
• In Canada a decent sized living space in a high rise might be called a "Condo"
• In NZ anything in a high rise is an "apartment" and anything that is not in a high-rise is a "house" apart from small one of two level "flats"  eg a "granny flat". 

In China a house seems to be anything from a 35msq (or less) concrete box  to a 150sqm (or more) modern privately constructed apartment in a gated community. 

The modern face of privately constructed gated apartment blocks.

This is the current style of building and the thing that staggered me is the scale - on one site I counted 36 of these towers under construction simultaneously  - huge cities seem to be under construction in a green fields approach and often in stark contrast to adjacent construction.

An interesting point of contrast in Hong Kong is that a 20 minute boat ride takes you to Lamma Island which is home to a truly massive power station but also to some very rise housing and a feeling of space that be very familiar to Kiwis. A very funky place to visit and note - no cars here only bikes.

The reality is that the Chinese build "up" not "out" and thus a city like Zhongshan (below) with the population of Auckland occupies about 10th the foot print.

Rurally, and that was the shock for me, there are just absolutely vast areas with really low population densities - despite its population China is of course a huge country, very similar in size to Canada and the USA and almost 40x the size of NZ.

This is the view from the fast train and I noticed what looked like a lot of "rural" renewal - what the picture is in more remote parts I don't know.

Older  1950's constructions, these in Jiangmen - at that time home to a thriving sugar cane processing factory. But note in 2014 the very modern vehicles outside!!

And just when I thought I'd seen it all - little north America outside Beijing - on the way to Xian 

In short a land of extreme contrast.