Taking the mickey

A young man with shoulder-length black hair stuck his head out of the door. 'Come on, she's getting tired,' he says impatiently. A group of six adults and children have spent the past 10 minutes debating whether or not to enter the shabby wooden hut in the middle of Guangzhou Nanhu Amusement Park - a dilapidated, rusting attraction in the downtown area of this sprawling, polluted city.

'I'm not sure I want to see,' says one.

'It's only seven yuan,' says another.

'What about the boys, won't it disturb them?' asks a third, referring to David and Jack Chang, 10-year-old twins who make up part of the group.

A hand-written sign on the wall gives little indication of what lies behind the peeling white door. 'A beautiful Yao girl from Guangxi Zhuang was orphaned at a very young age,' the sign proclaims. 'Shortly afterwards she developed a strange disease and her body has been forced into a pipe so that her head can be supported. For seven yuan you can look and ask questions. She will even sing.'

What horror lay behind the crumbling wooden facade; what heartless theme park owner would think of displaying the disability of one so young and helpless for their own profit; and what sort of people would pay to gawp at the misfortune of others?

Surely this is modern China, and aren't we in a theme park in the centre of a bustling, developing city? This isn't a freak show in Victorian England, where people with deformities were humiliated and exploited. Images of Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man, and the 21st-century equivalent of Coney Island's famous Lobster Boy flash through our minds.