There are “Ghost Cities” across the length and breadth of China, enormous areas of recent development: high-rise towers, fancy business districts, impressive museums and galleries, the works. They're the product of rapid growth and rising wealth in China but, as domestic demand lags behind supply, much of these new cities to be are startlingly unoccupied.
Construction in Zhengzhou's New Area is largely complete; ground for a few more towers and a new high-speed rail station (it'll be one of the largest in Asia) is sure to happen soon, but the district is, apparently, already open for business. At its heart, the Arts Centre.
The performance of Much Ado was surprisingly good, given my expectations of English theatre in Middle China I've the British theatre company currently touring China to thank for that.
Also surprising was the ending when, in this version, Don John is brought on stage in chains with a bucket in his head, Claudio whips out a pistol and executes him with a single shot to the head/ bucket, Hero gives the corpse a good kicking to check he's, well, a corpse, and everybody else bursts into song. Was this a special ending for a Chinese audience, I wonder?
But most surprising of all, that evening, was that there was a play on at all, and an audience to watch it, in what's supposed to be a deserted ghost city. It was by no means busy - the only people on the streets were coming to the performance, and the theatre was far from full, but there were cars, a couple of buses headed to the main town and a few shops and restaurants with lights on(few, if any, customers). The skyscrapers are apparently occupied, with businesses operating out of them, if their night-time illuminations are anything to go by.
It's normal in China for those with increasing wealth to invest in multiple residential properties to rent out (a tendency the central government seeks to curb) which would go some way to explaining why there are so few people on the streets. I now recall that the Car show I went to last year, was in the Exhibition hall across from the Arts Centre - further evidence that the New Area isn's a ghost city per se; as New Geography put is, "it took longer than expected for the place to come alive"