It was a Sunday afternoon. I was standing in the middle of a tree-lined boulevard, counting the lanes. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven ... and that was only in one direction.
On the horizon were block after block of office towers decorated with gold-plated domes and red Chinese characters. 'Renmin [people] ... fanrong [prosperity] ...' said some of them.
I would have needed a telescope to read the rest. Between me and the buildings was another 14-lane boulevard and a brush-dotted square the size of 24 soccer fields.
I was not in Beijing, Shanghai nor any of the big mainland cities.
I was standing in Fengcheng - a county-grade city in central China with no more than 1.4 million people. That is where my parents came from.
During my home-coming tour over Easter, warm-hearted relatives were eager to show me the hometown's great achievement: the new town that had been built over the past several years, about a 10-minute drive from the existing city.
Having been a journalist for more than two decades, I have seen many white elephants on the mainland - but nothing like this.