The apartment that Michael and his parents could afford was on the other side of the complex, beside the tile stores, not the lake. We stepped back into the elevator, and Michael seemed uncomfortable. Speaking in English, so his parents couldn’t understand, he said, “I won’t live here. I will put my parents here. I need to be back in a big city like Shenzhen or Beijing or Shanghai. Qingyuan is countryside. Second tier. They just learn ‘exam English.’ They don’t have big dreams here.”
