NEXT to the holiday resort of Silver Beach in Beihai lie hundreds of tents and nylon-covered shelters of thousands of Vietnamese immigrants who have flocked to the coastal area of Guangxi Province for better jobs in the past decade.
The place is surrounded by forests and the only access is a muddy road. What has happened in the past month to the ethnic-Chinese Vietnamese there is unknown to most Beihai residents.
The government cleared the huts of about 2,000 Vietnamese families to make way for a property development project - one of the more than 260 investment schemes to take off there this year. Huge excavators flattened the area in three days.
One of the affected Vietnamese, Mr Lai Zhangyou, 43, said: ''Hundreds of security staff came early in the morning and forcibly evicted us. And then excavators moved in.'' Since then, the nearly 10,000 Vietnamese have been forced to sleep on streets. Some left Beihai but most set up tents on the ruins, planning their escape routes to Hongkong.
Children idle away their days staring towards the forest while their parents keep busy picking up wood, branches, and anything that will burn, to make fires for cooking.
Their main diet is rice and congee. Pork or chicken is considered a luxury and only eaten on special occasions like Chinese New Year.
