All over the paddy fields of Beihai, giant concrete skeletons stand like forsaken temples to the boom-bust bubble economy of 1992 and 1993 when China astonished the world by claiming record annual growth rates of 13 and 14 per cent.
Locals now remember fondly how every night for a year or two the sky was lit up by welders working round the clock to turn this sleeping fishing port into a new Shenzhen.
Tens of thousands from all over China made their way to an obscure peninsula in impoverished Guangxi province to make their fortunes.
Now, the half finished villas and luxury hotels are occupied not by China's nouveaux riches but by thousands of unpaid construction workers who have hung their washing and hammocks in the windowless structures.
In this sub-tropical climate, jungle grasses are already growing rampantly across the six-carriage roads that lead to nowhere.
Investors simply ran out of money. They packed up and left for other places, explained Lei Xiang, senior city planner.
Yet for a while, money was no object in Beihai. Visitors are now shown the advanced and costly town planning computer system which Beihai in its heyday was the first to order in China.