The Xi'an city wall was built during the reign of the first Ming emperor Hongwu (c. AD 1370) on the remains of the old Sui and Tang Dynasty cities, and today marks out the borders of the Old City. It stands 12 meters tall, has a width of 12-14 meters at the top, and runs about 14 kilometers around the city.
It was quite stunning walking on top the wall. The outer side of the wall, the side facing the newer parts of the city, looked out on a beautiful, well-kept park where we saw many local Chinese at leisure, enjoying themselves. There were people performing music, learning martial arts, playing games, flying kits, etc. Of course, I could not judge at a distance on their socioeconomic status, but my gut impression was that many of these people were relatively well-off....at least less on the edge of poverty than those I saw on the inside side of the wall.
The other side of the wall was entirely different. A street ran alongside the wall that was set off from what lay beyond by a shorter 12-foot wall. On the other side of that wall was another street running parallel that fronted dilapidated buildings crammed together in close quarters. I only took a few pictures because it looked so terrible and I felt I would be prying by taking snapshots of the scene. All I can say is that it was very stunning, and the contrast between the two sides was unforgetable. It reminded me of when I stayed in a very expensive hotel (The Peninsula) in Bangkok, and just next to it on the Chao Praya river were some very dilapidated corrugated steel shacks.
Here are some people in the street on the inside side of the smaller wall, apparently recycling cardboard boxes by soaking them in water.
The interesting thing is that none of this was visible from the street that runs directly next to the City Wall. There is that 12-foot high wall on the other side of the street that for the most part blocks view of the slum from this street. Put from the much higher City Wall, everything is visible.
Anyway, I thought I'd offer this as food for thought on how cities deal with poverty and how the very poor live. It is interesting how the city tries to "put on a good face" by shunting off the poor behind a secondary wall, and accessible mainly through alleys that resumably only locals would use....if it weren't for this medieval City Wall granting us an eagle-eyed view, we would scarely have known such an area existed in the city. It is much the same thing in Beijing, which is rapidly developing and building new scenic buildings and residental areas in advance of the 2008 Olympics, making the older, more slum-like areas less accessible to outsiders who might see that all are not living in the same level of prosperity seen elsewhere in the city.
Anyway, how would you feel if you saw something like this -- a stark contrast like this -- and think about how good living conditions are back home, whether in the U.S. or in other developed nations? It makes one wonder how much of the population China's "development" is really helping....