This is John Batcher speaking with colleague Anne Stevenson Yang of the Ghost Cities of the People's

Republic of China, one in particular our W.S.J. video showing a series of mansions all lined up like a development in Tucson, Arizona,

three, four stories, stone-fronted, elaborate lobbies.

All of this, not occupied, but beyond that no windows open to the elements there were snow on the ground

Rain these are mansions that may or may now at one time have been owned

But now nothing it's a ghost city it's post

apocalypse rain coming in so it's destroying the interior puzzled to Anne what happens to these buildings?

As one particular room seemed to have evidence of a child having lived there.

There were drawings on the wall.

Where did they go?

Were they there? And it was theirs and they couldn't

live without windows? Or? Anne has an elaborate answer, two parts about the ghost

cities of China and what is to be done about an economy that is broken.

Well you have two sorts of phenomena, John.

One is that in order to build a lot of these developments when they're built in rural areas,

then the farmers are moved to other areas and they're guaranteed apartments in the new buildings.

But if the new buildings aren't completed,

then the farmers have their old places demolished,

but the new places are incomplete.

So you have had lots of situations where farmers have moved

into these these empty unheated hulks and kind of cooked food outside and gathered

their water in rain pools.

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