Dongguan County in Guangdong

Most of us know Dongguan County (东莞) in Guangdong province (广东省) as a thriving manufacturing post near Hong Kong, producing items such as toys and shoes.

But apparently it is also the first rural town in China to install an optical fibre telephone system where peasants could dial directly to the outside world - at a time when urban citizens in Beijing and Shanghai were still queuing up for public telephones.

Indeed, the county is said to be have become a model of township and village enterprise with which to impress official visitors from Beijing and abroad.

Some Chinese officials even predicted that by the end of the (last) century, Dongguan would have become "the Los Angeles of the East."

All these grand statements. The end of the last century had come and gone, and if Dongguan is the LA of the East, then it is an extremely well-kept secret.