Auditing firms announced that up to two-thirds of the Chinese viewing public watched the Olympics’ opening ceremonies. The state-controlled Chinese television system sent the ceremonies out live across the country on multiple channels, leaving little choice. But the elderly farmers and tea merchants here apparently went to bed early that night.

“This time of year, we’re just too busy,” said Wen Xing, 44, who was selling watermelons and squash from a truck bed alongside the main road running through the village.

Some Fan Shen residents, the eldest among its 600 families, did not recognise the Mandarin Chinese word for Olympics being held in Beijing. When it was translated into their Zhejiang dialect, they smiled and nodded but showed no particular sign of enthusiasm.

It is not that Fan Shen, surrounded by neatly terraced hillsides just inland from the East China Sea, has not enjoyed its share of benefits from China’s meteoric economic progress.

Previously known as one of Zhejiang’s poorest and most remote backwaters, the hills around here have become more prosperous since the Government built a concrete road connecting with the highway to the nearby port of Ningbo, allowing trucks to carry tea down to market more easily and buses to carry tourists up to scenic overlooks.

Reflecting the recent prosperity, several little grocery stores have opened up selling packaged foods to complement the melons, corn and mutton available locally. The merchants have even begun to stock store-bought tea — red tea in plastic bottles with sweetener and lemon flavor already mixed in.

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