China may have a poor environmental profile on the global level, but at the local level Chinese thrift and ingenuity prompt energy conservation and lots of reuse and recycling. Compact fluorescent light bulbs are the norm, and people turn out unused lights conscientiously. Scavenging of reusable materials is visible cottage industry. This outfit buys styrofoam from people who haul it from around the neighborhood.











With autumn comes promotions of new pressure cookers in the big supermarkets. Every display is flanked by stacks of old cookers. (I don’t know whether they buyer gets a rebate for the old pot.)











My favorite autumn ritual is the refurbishing of quilts. The man in the foreground is removing the old covers; the cotton batting is then fed through the contraption – a noisy one – the re-fluffs it. Finally, the batting is sewn into a new cover. (I was impressed that this crew chose to wear masks to protect their lungs from the lint.)

Last of the Yan Tan Village farms:

It’s the rainy season, which brings regular showers, mostly at night. Lanzhou is mud luscious and puddle pungent.

I walk as often as possible down the back lanes of Yantan village where the last few small farmers are hanging on. I just like to look at the green. In a few weeks the frost will blacken the fields, and no one can say whether there will be another growing season, or the bulldozers will arrive ahead of next year’s seeds.





My walk takes me along a lane lined by new low-rise apartment buildings provided by the government for dispossessed farmers; while I was away during the summer, part of the lane was paved . . . then the pavement drops off again into dirt track.



















The crops are surrounded by the older brick dwellings. The aqueduct rushes with runoff after all the rain – a dubious blessing in a city with open sewers. (When Dylan was here I heard her mutter the names of water-borne diseases under her breath whenever we sidestepped an urban freshet -- she was invoking a medicinal charm, perhaps!)