Obituary: Jia Jinglong died on November 15th

MAY 25th was an auspicious day for Jia Jinglong. It was his birthday by the lunar calendar, and in 2013 it was also the date of his forthcoming wedding to Li Lanlan. They had been going out for four years, a long time; but he was a shy boy, who had not wanted to go to college and didn’t read or write much, and who would blush whenever he spoke to a girl.

The wedding was to happen in his family house in North Gaoying village in Hebei province, near Beijing. “Village” no longer seemed the right word; the small houses were being rapidly swallowed up by the city of Shijiangzhuang, whose towers rose up to the sky at the end of the village streets, while the thump of pile-driving drowned out the birds. Nonetheless Mr Jia loved his spacious house. He and his father had built it only six years before; it was full of windows, not all of which looked out on the encroaching cranes. It had three storeys. His parents lived on the ground floor; his two Tibetan mastiffs were on the top; and the second storey, his part, was the wedding house. It was already filled with more than 100 plants, as well as bundles of straw which kept him, and them, warm. Around the...