A bumpy road ahead but a land of promise

Reporter's log | Gao Yuan

Although most of the 80-kilometer journey is on a busy freeway, the sight of desolate hills and occasional bumps lulled me to sleep as I made my way from downtown Lanzhou to the Lanzhou New Zone in Northwest China's Gansu province

The New Zone is on the same road as that to Lanzhou's only airport, where most of the other cars were heading.

A broad avenue branches off the freeway and five minutes later I found myself at the heart of the developing business park.

It is the largest construction site I've ever seen. It was a fairly clear day and for as far as I could see there were buildings either already completed or still under construction.

Huge vehicles populate the area. They shuttle between different sites, leaving dust trails hundreds of meters long behind them. Dust and sand dominate the environment in this northwestern part of the country. Water is always a precious gift from Mother Nature.

The precipitation rate in the area is about 35 centimeters a year, about the same amount as in arid New Mexico, in the United States.

The major water source for the New Zone and nearby villages comes from 120 kilometers away. In 1976, the government launched a project diverting water from a river near the Gansu-Qinghai border to irrigate the desert basin - where the zone is now located.

The massive operation was not completed until 1995.

Local residents are used to dry conditions and grew drought-tolerant crops such as corn to save water.

The New Zone project has changed a way of life that had lasted for generations. They no longer grow corn because the farmland was bought by the government to build the new city.

Some of the local people are ready to embrace city life and have temporary jobs on the construction sites.

However, although hiring local people could be as much as 50 percent cheaper than recruiting labor from outside, the contractors are keen to find workers from neighboring provinces because they are reportedly more skilled than locals.

"I am more than willing to pay 500 yuan ($80) a day for a skilled bricklayer from Sichuan than hire a local worker for 300 yuan," said Zhang Jiaqing, managing director of a commercial real estate project in the New Zone.

Locals are not to blame though. For generations they were taught how to grow corn in an arid land, not how to plaster walls.

Some residents are looking for work that does not involve too much physical labor.

In a little town less than a 10-minute drive from the New Zone, people bought construction machines hoping to rent them to building sites. Small bulldozers, cement mixers and trucks stand idle outside nearly every home, indicating that the rental business was not as lucrative as the farmers anticipated.

Yuan Zhanting, mayor of Lanzhou, has pledged to help the local farmers boost their incomes so they can enjoy life as city residents but some fear it could take years to adapt to a new existence.

There are still a great number of people trying to figure out how to cope with city life. The good news is that time is on their side. The entire 800 square kilometer zone will not be finished until 2030, the government estimates.

On my way back downtown in the late afternoon, I saw a farmer heading home with a flock of goats. His life has clearly not changed much apart from having to be especially vigilant crossing the busy eight-lane road.

Contact the writer at gaoyuan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 11/19/2012 page13)