On a clear day, you can see the 72-storey Longwish Hotel from more than 20km away, rearing up above the lush paddy fields of Huaxi village in southern Jiangsu province.
The ostentatious skyscraper, with 826 rooms, cuts an incongruous sight in a village of only 2,100 people; it is even crowned with a giant golden ball holding a revolving restaurant staffed by elegant waitresses from North Korea. Taller than New York’s Chrysler Building and the Shard in London, Longwish was completed in 2011 at a cost of more than Rmb3bn ($490m).
The only problem is that it is hard to fill so many rooms. During a quiet lunchtime, the North Korean waitresses perform traditional dances for a handful of inattentive locals who now live in the hotel with the help of subsidies from the village authorities.