Thanks for sharing. I'm actually moved by that a bit... My first job out of college was as an aircraft structures engineer at Boeing in Seattle. I was sat next to a Chinese engineer. He had been protesting in Tiananmen Square. President Bush allowed 900 of them to get asylum in the US as opposed letting them get slaughtered. So, he came over. He had been studying aero in the university there. He was a very nice young man, and his English sucked. But, we got along great and eventually he started sharing stories of his youth in China. I learned a lot at a young age. He knew I loved to fish and told me how he would catch frogs (to eat) by dangling a little handmade fly on a long pole over the frogs. They'd latch on and he'd put them in a bucket for dinner. He said there were backwater parts of China where they practiced cannibalism. I remember when he managed to get a drivers license and a little car. I think he did nothing other than drive all around when he wasn't in the office. Haha...

In '06 I went to a different zone and things seemed to be going very well for the general populace.

Side note: I went up to the roof of the factory I was contracted to work at to have a backwoods smoke and was joined by one of my Chinese coworkers. Looking at the commerce (and pretty girls) below he remarked how well things had become in this area and when he was younger he was glad to get something to eat and there were days when all he got was one sweet potato. He said if things ever went back to Mao's time they would go to Beijing and put heads on poles - obviously we were alone when he said that. [I quit smoking over a decade ago]

Very interesting.

My university's past two presidents had the same impression of the Chinese economic zones in 2005.

He looked totally lost in that factory.

Yes, I believe he was the Chinese leader that finally ended the Maoist cultural revolution before it burnt China to the ground. He was still a professed communist, but I think he was more of a Mussolini socialist/fascist. When I went to China the first time in '99 I was surprised at how "capitalist" the populace was becoming as a result of Deng's reforms (Edit add: I must admit in '99 I was working in one of the "economic zones" where "alternative" economic experiments (capitalism) can be tested). If it wasn't for Deng getting the Chinese ball rolling it would never have gotten where it is today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_Xi...
Deng is pronounced as Dung in Mandarin.
He was the Chinese premier in the 1990s.