Extremes.

On my walk to the gym today, I saw two furry creatures. It was the golden retriever puppy tied to the bicycle that caught my eye. Two feet away, its companion, a chicken, bobbed in the neon light glow.

Odd, I thought. One a pet, the other, food.

Yet, in my mind, this scene so perfectly captured China.

China is in the midst of reform. Gone are the days of Red Coats and clear communist agenda, instead, clean energy initiatives, electric car innovation and strides in stem cell research blanket the headlines of international newspapers, China has been busy. They're taking our technology and actually using it. According to the NYT, stem cell research has magnified to a record setting scale. A research center in Beijing holds the largest concentrated number of stem cells. What's more, China is leading all of these technological advancements. The result, a large middle class is emerging and given the sheer magnitude of China's vast population, this is HUGE. Welcoming with this new status is "new China". Golden retriever puppies, iPhones (& foreign teachers) imported from the U.S., anything one could want.

It's not just Beijing and Shanghai that have reflected this, even relatively rural Zhengzhou has wealth exploding like Old Faithful. New development is constant. For want of land, the new campus of my school has been pushed away from its central downtown location to the outskirts. Evidence of Zhengzhou's rapid sprawl is gleamed every commute, peasants rake the corn harvest over the empty road lanes while their crops border the concrete. Once inside the campus, our second apartments represent the new world, one with flat screen tvs and dishwashers.

YET, the past still lingers. The Luo Cheng Rock Climbing Tourist Festival showed me that first hand. Rural farmers don't know what an iPhone is, they have yet to use a computer.

Chicken meets pure bred and its all Made in China.

(If you want to read more about China's emerging power, turn to the NYT's recent article about China's three faces.)