China Journal: An Eco-Utopia In The Desert?  The New Republic
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for just $34.97Sign me up  THE VINE MAY 28, 2010  China Journal:
An Eco-Utopia In The Desert?  Jiayuguan, China—My first question
to the mayor, naturally, is about the porpoise. On the outskirts
of Jiayuguan, an industrial city of about 300,000 smack in the
middle of the Gobi Desert, there's a 15-story-tall steel
dolphin, standing erect, balancing a giant ball on its nose.
After dusk, the structure is set ablaze in bright neon, its
flashing flippers visible from miles away. "That's not a, uh,
native species around these parts, is it?" Nope. Turns out, the
dolphin is just a large hulking metaphor: "We want our town to
rise up," says the mayor, "like the dolphin rises out of the
water."  Well, fair enough. Before the 1950s, there was
virtually nothing in this old Silk Road outpost apart from the
westernmost tower of the Great W