EIGHT months ago, the residents of China's richest village, Daqiuzhuang, were busily preparing for the arrival of the country's most powerful man, Mr Deng Xiaoping.
The visit would have been the crowning glory of the village's spectacular rise from rags to riches but Mr Deng never made it and it is now highly unlikely the patriarch will ever try again. In fact, hardly anyone is inclined to visit Daqiuzhuang nowadays.
The village that last year boasted up to 3,000 visitors a day has become a ghost town.
No one appears to be working at the newly completed ''corporate headquarters'' in its centre, the Mercedes and Cadillacs which used to dominate its dusty streets are conspicuous by their absence, and the only guests at the upmarket Kowloon Hotel are police officers from the nearby city of Tianjin.
Neither is there any news in the official press about Daqiuzhuang. Just a few months ago you could not open a newspaper or turn on the television without seeing the village or its enigmatic leader Mr Yu Zuomin.
Today you will not find one inch of copy about Daqiuzhuang in Beijing newspapers and Mr Yu appears to have vanished.
Numerous requests to interview the gaunt, chain-smoking village headman during the National People's Congress - to which he was a delegate - were all turned down and not a word about Daqiuzhuang was mentioned during a specially-convened NPC press conference on village enterprises.