The curbs are high in Beijing. You won't find slopes or slanted paths leading the old or crippled from the chaotic street to the safety of the pavement. China ignores its most disadvantaged. Millions living in abject poverty while the government spends $3 billion on an opera house. The 7% of the country able produce food for 1.3 billion people now shrinking due to the relentless rate of desertification, and yet $3 billion had been earmarked to send a rocket sprorting the Chinese flag around the earth 14 times, using the same technology the now defunct Soviet Union used for the same feat four decades previously. Just on the outskirts of Beijing rises the Chateau Zhang Laffitte, a carbon-copy of the original 1650 Chateau Maisons-Laffitte on the Seine using the same white Chantilly stone. …
