Are You Building a Bypass through My House?

In the hilariously funny "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", the book opens up with the protagonist, Arthur Dent, trying to protect his house from being bulldozed because of the construction of a bypass. Soon after, he narrowly escaped the destruction of earth. The reason for the destruction was to clear way for a intergalactic bypass.

There has been a flurry of superhighways being built in the western part of China; all a part of the government's plan to modernize and grow the economy of western provinces.

I came across this one in Guizhou province on my last trip. Can you spot the shack still standing in the shadow the super highway?

The nice thing about being a communist country is that you, as the government, can decide to build a highway, make way, demolish buildings, and construct the highways all without having to worry about popular opinion. Things definitely move much, much faster this way.

While we are on the subject of building big things, the Three Gorges Dam Project, is very impressive as well. I recently found out that they had to relocate 2million people to build this dam! This dam would have never been built in America or any other democratic country, can you imagine having 2 million of the following conversations?*

"I'm afraid you're going to have to accept it," said Mr Prosser gripping his fur hat and rolling it round the top of his head, "this bypass has got to be built and it's going to be built!"

"First I've heard of it," said Arthur, "why's it going to be built?"

Mr Prosser shook his finger at him for a bit, then stopped and put it away again.

"What do you mean, why's it got to be built?" he said. "It's a bypass. You've got to build bypasses."

*Excerpt from "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"