YELLOW SHEEP RIVER, China — This village on the edge of the Gobi desert entered the 21st century much as it had the previous one, with yellow sand blanketing the mountains and poor farmers sharing their mud huts with cows, donkeys and pigs.
No homes had running water. No shops sold clothes, just bundles of fabric to be sewn into shirts and pants. Donkey carts plied the dusty main street, rarely troubled by the rumble of a motor.
No one in this forgotten section of northwestern China seemed to realize that the nation's east coast was booming or that dot-coms were changing the world. But then, out of the blue, came an idea -- and a multimillionaire -- that promised to bring prosperity here.
High-tech entrepreneur Sayling Wen heard about the village and decided that by harnessing the power of computers, he could beam its 30,000 inhabitants into the Information Age economy.
Never mind that the Taiwanese tycoon had never laid eyes on the place. He would turn Yellow Sheep River into China's first "Internet village."
"The plan seemed unthinkable, like jade falling from the sky," said local Communist Party secretary Zhang Xusheng.
Wen donated 100 new computers and arranged for teachers to be trained. He believed that by teaching computer basics to schoolkids, he could quickly develop a labor force to perform simple tasks for Western high-tech firms looking to outsource work.
Next he began building a $50-million, 140-room hotel and convention center in the village, with high-speed Internet connections, state-of-the-art meeting rooms, swimming pool, sauna and even a stable for horse- and camel-back riding.
Wen planned to have villagers staff the hotel, and would invite tech-savvy workers from China's east to train others. High-tech executives could use it as an exotic conference locale, and meet Yellow Sheep River's labor pool. The project would spawn more development.
Just as things were looking up, Wen dropped dead.
Now the people of Yellow Sheep River are at a crossroads, unsure how to move forward without their visionary leader, unwilling to go back to their old way of life.
"Just like Mr. Wen used to say, we are a bunch of lonely soldiers," said Chen Ming, the hotel's manager. "All we can do now is press on."
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Perhaps in Yellow Sheep River, Wen saw something of his own beginnings. Or maybe just a chance to make money.
