Beijing was another engine of bright aspiration, from the Miracle Love Studio where flight attendant Liu Ying, 29, and pilot Mu Xiaobin, 26, were having wedding photos taken, to the beauty parlor where makeup artist Jin Rui, 24, says China is getting “stronger and stronger.” Spirits seemed to ebb with advancing age and, more ominously, with distance from the prosperous coast. In Xinjiang, site of recurring Muslim unrest, an 85-year-old mullah named Yahamiqit in the capital city of Urumqi said the economy was visibly improving, “but there are other issues I cannot discuss.” If there is a dark spot in the next half century, it may appear in the west.
