Quote from author Paul Thoreaux in his book, "Ghost Train to the Eastern Star". "China exists in its present form because the Chinese want money. Once America was like that. Maybe this accounted for my desire to leave. Not revulsion, but the tedium and growing irritation of listening to people express their wish for money, that they'd do anything to make it. Who wants to hear people boasting about their greed and their promiscuity? I left for Japan, revelling in the thought that I was done with China - its factory blighted landscape, its unbreathable air, its unbudging commissars and its honking born again capitalists. Ugly and soulless, China represented the horror of answered prayers, a peasant's greedy dream of development. I was happy to leave.