China's "model" village has given itself an ostentatious gift for its 50th birthday: a skyscraper taller than the Eiffel Tower or New York's Chrysler building.
The one ton 24K gold bull sculpture unveiled in the newly completed 328-meter-tall New Village Building in Huaxi village in Jiangyin city in eastern China's Jiangsu province
Rising up from the flat plains around it like an enormous, triple-hulled rocket and topped with what can only be described as a giant gold golf ball, the £300 million 1,076ft-tall "New Village in the Sky" is to open at the end of next week.
A worker stands besides a lake with the skyscraper in the background in Hua xi village, Jiangsu province, China on 23 Sept. 2011
When it does, Huaxi will become the only rural village in the world with its own skyscraper. But then Huaxi (permanent pop. 2,000) is no ordinary village, it is an extraordinary example of China's schizophrenic blend of communism and capitalism.
For China's propaganda chiefs, Huaxi is a validation of the Marxist-Leninist dream; a centrally-planned utopia where collectivism has made everyone not just equal, but rich as well.
The village's £3 billion of assets and investments, which include a one-ton solid-gold water buffalo and two shiny new helicopters, are publicly-owned and each year, one-fifth of the village's post-tax profits are shared out in an annual bonus.
Meanwhile, each family is given its own "modern European-style villa" as well as free medical care, education and daily staples such as rice, cooking oil and fruit and vegetables from the village's organic farms and greenhouses.
"Some visitors from Brazil said our bananas were better than theirs," said Zhu Minxin, 25, a spokesman, as she proudly showed off a ripe array of pumpkins and papayas.
The propaganda about Huaxi has spread across China and each day 2,000 tourists, many of them Communist party cadres, arrive to see the miracle for themselves.
In the village hall, they strain to hear the secrets of Wu Renbao, the 84-year-old former party secretary who guided Huaxi for most of the last five decades before handing the reins to one of his sons.
"I have four rules," he tells them. "I do not get proud when praised, or angry when criticised. I do not get frustrated in hard times. And as long as I live I will not stop serving the Party and the country."
Afterwards, singers, dancers and acrobats put on a show about Huaxi's prosperity. The lyrics to one song were: "We can travel around the world, eating KFC in New York and sleeping in Buckingham Palace."
Old Wu is careful to proclaim the benefits of Communist party rule, and indeed Huaxi's new skyscraper is the exact height of the tallest building in Beijing. He does not wish to overstep the line. But in private, a story emerges of how defying the system was the key to the village's good fortune.
It was in the dark days of 1969, during the Cultural Revolution, that Huaxi secretly set up its first factory, manufacturing screws. Such enterprises were banned and Old Wu could have been severely punished.
"Luckily, we were not cracked down on and I managed to uphold production," he said.
"That was his greatest achievement, in my opinion, because we managed to build up some capital to invest when the time was right. Old Wu used to disband the factory when the inspectors came round and send everyone back to the fields," said Miss Zhu.
"At the time, the slogan was to cut the tail off capitalism, but we managed to keep our tail," added Xu Manqing, 70, the head of the local Party school.
By the time Deng Xiaoping proclaimed that "getting rich is glorious" in 1992, kick-starting China's economic miracle, Old Wu was ready. He summoned the village bosses to a 2am meeting and asked for 20 million yuan (£2 million) to invest in raw materials: steel, copper and aluminium. In the weeks that followed, the prices of the metals doubled or quadrupled, but Huaxi had moved first.
Today, the village is a corporation, the Jiangsu Huaxi Group, with interests in metals, textiles, property and logistics. Rarely has Old Wu missed an opportunity, even scooping out the centre of the village and turning it into a lake in order to sell earth to the builders of the Nanjing to Shanghai motorway.
"During the financial crisis, we bought five second-hand ships, at a third of their value," said Miss Zhu. "Now we have commissioned another eight so we can be a force in shipping." The golden water buffalo, which cost £30 million, has already soared in value, she added.
Over 25,000 workers have migrated to greater Huaxi and while they do not share in the village's wealth, they get far better housing and benefits than they would elsewhere.
More of a benevolent kingdom, ruled over by Old Wu and his four sons, than a Communist paradise, the next step for Huaxi is tourism. The new skyscraper will be a luxury hotel. "This skyscraper will give us the edge," said old Wu. "No other village has one, and 3,000 people can work there. The next five years is critical, we are going to go from village to city."
