Villager's wretched life reveals dark side of Guangdong 'miracle'

Steven Li, 19, wears Armani and Louis Vuitton from head to toe and used to pick up his English tutor in Guangzhou in a different car each lesson. His SUVs ranged from a Toyota Highlander to a Range Rover, and other vehicles included a Lexus SC430 and an Infiniti.

When he recently moved to the United States to study English, he bought himself two new toys right after landing in Boston: the latest iPhone 4 and a Porsche 911, both for cash.

Li is not a multimillionaire himself but his father is a rich businessmen in Guangdong, the richest province on the mainland. Many others like him also lead extravagant lifestyles, as evidenced by the queues outside the luxury brand boutiques next to the Baiyun Hotel.

Less than 500 kilometres away, on the Leizhou Peninsula in far southwestern Guangdong, where 47-year-old Lai Xuegui lives a life of abject poverty, the mainland's wealth gap is thrown into stark relief.

She lives in a village 50 kilometres from the city of Leizhou , where people speak the Li dialect. It is a much neglected area, with development of western Guangdong having long lagged behind Pearl River Delta centres such as Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Zhuhai .

Guangzhou recently held the 16th Asian Games, at a cost of 122.6 billion yuan (HK$144.6 billion). Lai and her three sons in Tiandun village have never heard of the Games and do not understand why they were held.