Not two minutes from the front door of my building there's this weird little shanty town. The families all live in tiny one-bedroom apartments that double as stores- there's a small restaurant, a convenience store, a tea shop, a metal recycling center, a tile cutter, and some other stuff. It's pretty crazy that people can live like this, surrounded on all sides by sprawling high-rise apartment complexes and shiny university campuses and within spitting distance of what will be a metro station some day.
Eileen's theory is that they're all holding out for some day when a developer or the city government will buy them out. Given the location, even their tiny little street should be pretty valuable, so maybe that's it. Until then, the 'China miracle' is leaving them behind.
