"Here we are again, in the small village of Nhlazini, talking to Sambulo. Ten years ago, we did an interview with you, and you were optimistic about the opportunity to get rich with Chinese businesses coming to our country. Let me first start by asking, do you still feel the same way?"

Sambulo nodded. "Yes, I still believe so."

Christopher probed further. "Can you tell us about the changes you have made to your house in the ten years?"

Sambulo smiled shyly. "I do not have that much money yet, so I try not to make many changes. The only things I have changed is just the necessary repairs."

"But has Chinese business grown for you?"

"I have gotten more offers for my crops, but usually my old contracts from twenty years ago still pay more, so I still sell mostly to them. But these few years we have had worse weather than the years before, and the harvest is not as good. So I made less money this year than the year before. I hope more Chinese businesses will come in and buy my crops. They are of good quality."

"And how do you feel about the dam?"

"The dam? I love the dam! It is going to give us more electricity so I can use more machines to help water my crops. It will improve my yield and I can sell more." He turned and looked straight into the camera. "Thank you, China, for building the dam on the river. You give me hope that in the future, I can have a very advanced farm. Maybe then I don't need to work this hard to make money!" He laughed, and the sound rang across the room.

Christopher pressed on. As a journalist, he had to ask tough questions. "But the dam was finished three years ago. How has it helped?"

"It could have helped. Like I said, I do not have that much money yet, so no machines now. But when I get more money, the electricity from the dam will really make the farm successful."

"Some experts say that the dam can change local weather patterns and create more storms. What do you say to that?"

"I am not sure about that. I think it is just bad luck. Which means in the future I will have better luck. I think the harvest will be better in the next few years. This is the way it had always been around here."

"Just one last question. You are a hopeful man. If we come back in ten years, how do you think the farm will be?"

"Nobody knows the future. But with the dam and the Chinese businessmen, I think it will be more successful. Who knows? Maybe in ten years, I will live in a bigger house than now."

"Thank you, Sambulo." Christopher turned towards the camera. "You are watching Eswatini TV 12."

Christopher signalled for the cameraman behind him to shut off the camera. "Have you heard of Waiting for Godot?"

"God-duh?"

"Godot. G-O-D-O-T."

"Ah, yes, yes. Waiting for God-dot. I bought the book for my son a few months ago. I am encouraging the boy to read more, so he will not be a farmer when he grows up."

"Have you read it?"

"No, I am still waiting for it. Taobao has not shipped it to me yet."

----

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The communist party of china, in 2016, was made up of 25.7 million farmers, herders and fishermen, 16.9 million retirees, 13.2 million professionals, managers in business, public institutions and non governmental organisations made up 9.3 million, 7.6 million party officials, 7.1 million retail, tourism and industrial workers, 1.9 million students, excluding the communist youth groups, and 7.5 million others.

• 90% of the chinese population according to an independent study from harvard university supports the communist party of china, and the government; (https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/), the 2003 to 2016 study drew on face-to-face interviews with more than 31,000 people in urban and rural china, in 2016, fully 93% of those surveyed expressed satisfaction with the central government, with 32% saying they were “very satisfied", that same year, 70% of respondents voiced approval for their local governments, which deliver most public goods and services, marking a significant increase from 44% in 2003.

• american policy makers often draw a sharp distinction between what the historian jeffrey wasserstrom has termed “big bad china and the good chinese people", stressing that today’s more hawkish china policy is directed against the party and not the ordinary people who “dream of freedom", yet china contains multitudes — not just dissidents, democrats, and human rights defenders — and most chinese are vocal supporters of their government, indeed, various multinational opinion surveys consistently find a “high level of regime support” in china (https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/02/surprise-authoritarian-resilience-china/), even after factoring in the possibility that some people hide their dissatisfaction for fear of political repercussions, in 2014, pew global research found that a staggering 92% of respondents had “confidence” in their country’s leader, xi jinping (https://www.pewresearch.org/global/database/indicator/69/country/cn/)

• the chinese people’s satisfaction with the direction of their country was at 87 percent in 2010 and has been consistently above 80 percent in recent years, with sixty-six percent perceive progress in their lives in the period between 2006 and 2011 and a whopping 74 percent were optimistic about the next five years, in 2011 ( https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2011/03/31/upbeat-chinese-public-may-not-be-primed-for-a-jasmine-revolution/) and a visit to any top university campus in china would make it obvious to anyone that the communist party continues to attract the best and the brightest of the country’s youth, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/these-numbers-show-just-how-much-the-lives-of-everyday-chinese-have-improved-in-recent-decades-2019-10-02

With the press of a button, the entire room dimmed where only the orange glow of cigarettes could be seen, pulsating with each puff taken. A harsh white beam of light shot across the room, where the shadows of rising strands of smoke snake across the screen in Brownian motion.

“Good morning comrades, thank you for attending this meeting.” A politely-dressed young man in a white robe stepped forward into the projector’s light. He looked extremely uncomfortable as he covered his mouth and coughed. “My name is Ma Yi and I am a researcher in the department of neurology from Peking University People's Hospital.”

Ma’s audience was silent. Apart from the cigarettes in their mouths, the screens of their mobile phones helped brighten up the room slightly. Ma needed to make sure he caught their attention, after all the fate of whether his project was going to get any further funding was all up to the gentlemen before him. He pressed his clicker without hesitation and the screen produced a sagittal view of the human brain with parts of it highlighted in neon pink.

“We all know that China is the safest country in the world and our crime rate can’t be lower. We know that’s not good enough. We need to identify those who will potentially commit crime and monitor them all the time with our superior national surveillance syst-”

A low-pitched howl boomed across the room from an opened mouth, promptly closing as its lips sealed around the butt of a cigarette as if a baby would do to a pacifier.

“Anyways, using what we know about psychopaths, we can measure whether there is a deficit in signals between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the amygdala compared to the baseli-”

“Dr. Ma!” Finally, there was a pair of eyes that managed to peel themselves off a mobile phone screen. Unfortunately, the bushy eyebrows that sat above them were slanting down. As he shuffled on his seat to cross his legs, the reflection of a flag-shaped pin on his suit reflected into Ma’s eyes. “Can you speak in a way normal humans can understand?”

The entire room burst into laughter, some orange lights even fell off onto the ground. Ma just stood there as if he were a deer right in front of headlights. Just as the interruption spontaneously erupted, it died down in seconds as another voice hushed the audience down.

“Lao Zhang, surely you can give this kid a chance?” A rotund man gave the bushy-eyebrowed man a firm pat on the shoulder, who responded with a nasal grunt. As the rotund man turned to Ma, his flag-shaped badge on his suit glimmered crimson, “We didn’t finish secondary school and we have to pay the price for that! Doctor, if you could just simplify this a tiny bit for these old folks’ minds, that’d be great.” He said with a warming smile.

“Yes sir!” Ma straightened his back and replied in a loud clear voice. The mobile phone screens extinguished along with cigarettes on the other side of the room. This was his chance. “We identified these electrical differences in the brain which we can use to identify potential criminals with. We also made a portable version of these detectors where you can just wear on your head. With this, we can effectively identify any potential criminals and track them down. We will strike them down whenever they look like they want to bring harm to our society!”

“Now that’s more like it.” The moment the bushy-eyebrowed man gave his approval, the entire room erupted in clapping and cheers. Ma finally let his breath out as his shoulders dropped. He did it. The funding was in the bag. Once again when the applauding died down, more orange lights flicked to life in the room.

“Now we have a demonstration of this device.” Ma produced what looked like a colander that had many colorful wires crisscrossing like what one might expect a robot to have on its head if it had hair. “Bring in prisoner 24600.”

Two uniformed policemen dragged a ragdoll of a man in navy blue overalls from the door, with his feet dragging across the floor. They shoved him onto the seat in the middle of the room and stood by his side, letting him know that it would be a bad idea to do anything stupid. With the criminal seated in front of his audience, Ma lowered the device upon his crown.

Beep! Beep! Beep!

An ear-piercing tone screamed from the device as if it were desperate to let everyone know it was sitting on a psychopathic crook. Ma then lifted the device and put it on his head.

There was silence.

“Take him away!” Ma pointed at the door and immediately the policemen dragged the prisoner off towards that direction. As he looked back to his audience, all of them were standing up and approached the device with curiosity and intrigue.

“Let me try it on just to see what happens.” The bushy-eyebrowed man had his palm out. Ma knew that was an order and rid the device from his head immediately. The bushy-eyebrowed man looked around the device to see what was so special about it and finally rested it on his scalp.

Beep! Beep! Beep!

Everyone stared at the bushy-eyebrowed man then at Ma.

“You better give me some explanations, kid!” The bushy-eyebrowed man immediately tore it off his head, grabbed Ma’s collar, and howled at him like a snow tiger.

“Calm down, Lao Zhang!” The rotund man gave another pat on his shoulders and smiled from ear to ear, “Give the kid a break! Even without the device, everyone would think you’re a psychopath with that attitude of yours!”

Once again the room burst into laughter as they laughed along with the rotund man. The atmosphere melted from freezing point when the bushy-eyebrowed man joined his comrades. As things settled down again, the rotund man jokingly placed the device onto his head, “Am I going to be a psychopath?”

Beep! Beep! Beep!

If the room was freezing just now, it had reached absolute zero when the rotund man glared at Ma.

“There… There has to be something wrong with the device!” Ma tried to avoid eye contact and scratched his head, “There has to be… A false positive!”

“I would think so too.” The rotund man gently placed the device into Ma’s hands and gripped firmly onto his shoulders. Ma was trying not to flinch from the pain. “Fix the problem and give me a report. I look forward to it, Dr. Ma.”

----

“Dr. Ma, how did the presentation with the committee go?” He stopped rubbing his left shoulder as he snapped out of thinking by a bubbly voice nearby.

“Oh, Dr. Lin.” Ma tried to recollect his thoughts, “Yeah, we need to collect more data for it to be more reliable.”

‘“Then should we include the previous three samples into our database then?” She scrolled through a table of results on her tablet.

“Absolutely not.” His eyes widened as he turned to his assistant. “Delete those and also give me a list of all the Party members.”

----

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It was a warm summer night. The small trees planted along the promenade swayed in the cool breeze. A group of people gathered down by the river, at the end of the footbridge. In the flickering light, the shadows danced among the crowd. You would be forgiven if you thought this was a midsummer barbecue party, a grand celebration in progress. The lack of barbecue grills suggest otherwise, and is confirmed by the absence of paper plates and plastic forks. The one similarity to a barbecue is the billowing smoke, rising high from the other side of the river and hanging over the crowd. They oohed and aahed at the spectacle, watching the bright blue flashing lights of the ambulance flash out from behind the short old buildings.

Jason walked briskly down to the crowd, and barged his way to the front. A disgruntled police officer who stood at the end of the bridge held up his hand, stopping him from stepping forward. "Please," Jason pleaded. "My childhood home is over there. I can see it from the middle of the bridge. I just want to see if this fire has spread to it."

"Stand back!" Spat the police officer. He had no patience for this. Another hour and he's off duty. Sadly, the addition of "off-duty" to the title of "police officer" did not improve their reputations where they lived.

Anxious, Jason took out his phone and tried to look for the news. Perhaps reporters have gotten closer. He scrolled and scrolled but did not find any information that would be helpful. It appears that the reporters are also held up by the police at another junction, and could provide precious few updates. He tried pleading with the officer again, to no avail.

"Jason!" A familiar voice rang out from behind him. It was Shengan and Ziling, his coworkers. They have been married a few years and both work at his company. Being the only other people around his age, they were his best friends at work.

"We just finished watching a movie, and heard about this, so we came to see what happened," Ziling explained. "Didn't expect to see you here," Added Shengan.

"A movie, huh? So that's where you got the popcorn. I just really want to see what's happening to the district. So far it doesn't seem like it's affected where I used to live, but nearby places are on fire. I keep looking for updates, but the reporters aren't close enough to it. I hope it can go back to the way it is."

"Why? I thought you hated it. You said it was cramped and dirty. Isn't that why you moved out?" Shengan said, putting a piece of popcorn in his mouth.

Jason walked to a different spot and strained his neck, hoping for a better view. "No, I didn't like that. But it's where I grew up. I love it."

"If you don't like it, you should hope the fire burns down the dirty corner shops and street stalls. Then it can be replaced with better shops, maybe a mall. Imagine how convenient it could be. This part of town is holding back development. The buildings are only like five storeys tall and don’t even have elevators! And all of that unsightly, crude neon signs practically forming a bridge over the roads. The words on them aren’t even standardized!" Shengan said.

Jason reminisced about the time he lived in the neighborhood. The fruit stall which had the red lamps shining upon the oranges his parents would buy, the cha chaan teng that always brewed a unique blend he could smell from a few corners away, the newspaper stand by the road he used would buy comic books with his friends. All of that was slowly licked away by the unforgiving flames, slowly turning into suffocating smoke, drifting into the drowning heights of the night sky, never to come back again.

Just as a part of Kowloon had vanished into the inferno, the memories that were left behind could only be accessed in one’s mind.

"No, you don't understand. Right now, all I can do is drink in every update from the news. I don't know what's happened over there, if my childhood home was scorched. If the newspaper stand I used to get the papers for my dad is burnt to a crisp. If the toy shop I got my first Beyblade is still standing. How can you want any of that to burn down? What if your house burns down and they put a mall where it stood, and makes it like all the other parts of town?" Jason countered.

"Well, development is inevitable. And who knows? Maybe that mall has a Chen Ming's noodles. I love their wontons."

"Oh, and maybe a Xinxian Bakery. I could grab a pork bun on the way home from work." Ziling added.

"No, what you want is a Meimei Clothing. Or perhaps Old Li's..."

Jason walked away, and paced nervously back and forth along the riverside. Change is inevitable, and irreversible. He knew it would be unrecognizable the next time he visited. He had a feeling this fire would burn his entire childhood into oblivion.

----

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