The memories of our China trip still linger in my mind. One of those memories is our ride on the high-speed trains from Xian to Beijing and from Beijing to Shanghai. During our trip on the fabulous high-speed trains, we passed huge cities about every 30 minutes. These cities looked as though no one lived in them. Every city we passed, I would put my head close to the window so I could to see if there were any signs of life. I could not! I kept telling my husband Pete that it looked as though the cities were empty.

After returning home, I mentioned the empty cities to a friend. He told me that 60 Minutes and Dateline had both done segments on the “Ghost Cities of China”. I immediately googled it and found lots of information on these cities. Dateline’s tag on YouTube states, “Vast cities are being built across China at a rate of ten a year, but they remain almost uninhabited ghost towns. It’s estimated there are 64 million empty apartments.”

China only built the cities for growth of its economic product! In other words, they wanted to keep their workers busy. By reviewing internet use, or rather disuse, MIT Technology Review estimated there are 50 of these vast ghost cities across China.