Again, this was Baez's slightly modified version of the song.

奶奶生日快乐，大家中秋快乐。

We had an apartment in the city
Me and Loretta liked living there
It's been years since the kids had grown
Lives of their own, left us alone

John and Linda live in Omaha
And Joe is somewhere on the road
We lost Davy in the Korean War
Still don't know what for, don't matter anymore

Old trees just grow stronger
And old rivers get wilder every day
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say "Hello in there, Hello."

Me and Loretta, we don't talk much more
She sits and stares through the back door screen
All the news just repeats itself
Like some forgotten dream that we've both seen

Some day I'll go and call up Rudy
We worked together at the factory
But what'll I say when he asks, "What's new?"
"Nothin'. What's with you?"  Nothin' much to do.

So if you're walkin' down the street some day
And spot some hollow, ancient eyes
Please don't just pass 'em by and stare
As if you didn't care, say "Hello in there, Hello." 

Luohe’s prestige in China’s food industry is dependent on several factors, and a clean natural environment tops them all. Bai Hongxi, a director with the city’s environment protection bureau, puts the logic in just the right words: “We’re a major food producer, and people expect food producers to be clean. An untidy setting won’t get your very far.”

Its new core vision in becoming an environmentally friendly city in the midland region is likewise a result of unique advantages, including its well-rounded industrial structure, headed by the light industry; a flatland geography, which makes pollution treatment all the simpler compared with the mountainous areas; a medium-sized city scale, and proper water treatment.

There were down times in Luohe’s recent history in ecological conservation, through which administrators learned to place environment protection as the top priority in development instead of economic investment per se, Bai said.

The early 1990s was a golden period for polluting enterprises in the city. Over 100 paper mills operated day and night, discharging sewage into the Sha and Li Rivers, the two main branches of the central Huai River which snake away through Luohe.

But through more than a decade of collective effort, the local chemical oxygen demand (COD), a crucial indicator of water pollutants, was reduced from 109,800 tons in 1993 to 26,500 tons in 2006, setting a fine example for other branches of the Huai River. Today, Yinge Industrial Corporation, a national top ten in the field and one provincially awarded for the measures it took to cut water pollution, remains the only papermaking group in Luohe.

As Luohe’s successful wrestle with environment pollution draws public attention, it has also stepped up actions toward building a national environment protection model city. To date, Luohe has already accomplished 19 of the 32 indicators set out by the state environmental protection administration and is close to realizing another eight.

“We’re still lagging behind in a number of important indexes, including the utilization rate of clean energy, central heating and urban sewage treatment, all which will take significant time and effort,” Bai said.

The city is striving to complete all requirements within three to five years. Nonetheless, the process of improving the natural environment and elevating the local living conditions accordingly is much more important than the actual outcome itself, he said.

Picture a sweet little city in the middle of China that, amidst all the ambitious construction projects, hastened pace of urbanization and soaring economic development in this country, has managed to both retain inner peace and achieve social harmony ahead of the metropolitans. A place left fundamentally unimpaired by the recurring patterns of modern urban planning, where people still group together in large numbers to sing and dance from morning till night.

That city is Luohe, says 29-year-old Zhang Huanxia, head of its Malu Street sub-district administration’s Bayi Road residential committee, taking care of 6,890 residents and perhaps more transient people mushroomed around the busy train station.

It’s been nine years since she started working here after college, and Zhang has seen enormous improvements. “For decades, this job had been on the shoulders of poorly educated but passionate retired grannies,” she said. “The work was loose, and many considered it irrelevant.”

Now, the chiefs in all six of Malu’s residential committees are youngsters who at least finished college, a change which has brought much more liveliness than the level of their degree suggests. In a pioneer attempt, for example, conflict resolution (CR) stations have been set up in every residential compound, street side shop and department store in Malu to facilitate a harmonious environment for all.

Also, the public’s legal awareness has increased through neighborhood activities and campaigns organized by the committee’s grassroots CR teams, and their heads, the so-called compound, floor and vendor leaders, are responsible for updating weekly reports of their sites.

“The level of autonomy is fairly large in these groups, which form their own patrol teams and deal with things through democratic discussion,” added 34-year-old Chen Junxia, who is in her 10^th year as chief of the Malu Street residential committee, Luohe’s commercial hub where nearly 3,000 people live.

The locals don’t just create grassroots administrations, though. Since 2000, 26 folk art groups have been formed in the Malu sub-district. The amateur singers started with only a dozen people and now boast a team of over 200, performing each night at the different squares and parks the city has built, and attracting an audience of 700 to 1,000 in every show. The five or six dancers that started the daily public dances, meanwhile, have more than 2,000 supporters today who take part to the enchanting rhymes of the Henan Opera.

Zhang, Chen and the other residential reps are also active in the folk parties. “Years ago, all we did in our spare time was playing mahjong. Thankfully, we’ve realized that singing and dancing are all the better. And above anything else, this routine scene here is a sign of social harmony,” Chen said. “Don’t you think?”  

In more ways than the cliché informs, Luohe wasn’t built overnight. The X generation won’t likely tell you that, but Gao Feng of all people knows firsthand how it changed from 20 years ago.

The Xuchang native was 31 when he first came to Luohe in October 1986, the year it became a prefecture-level city. A police officer of seven years, he travelled from the nearby Pingdingshan on an obsolete bus. Although his expectations were low, Gao was still shocked by Luohe’s cobblestone roads and dusty paths, as well as the livestock that wandered freely on them.

Even today, the city’s deputy police chief can hardly imagine how it developed over the years.

“I can remember it so vividly,” said Gao, who became a grandfather half a year ago. “There was no downtown then – the mule-horse market was the place to be. I asked for where the police station was from one end of the city to the other, and nobody knew.”

When he finally did manage to check in, there wasn’t enough room in the dorm. Gao had to stay outside the city for two months until his accommodation was settled.

The young lad and his 32 colleagues watched on with ease as massive road construction projects began in the following year. But still, it wasn’t until fall 1988 that the station purchased its first motorcycle to go along with the three outdated cars and dozens of worn-out bikes, which were the officers’ main transportation vehicles.

“Despite its recent success, Luohe’s overall development has been a difficult process, since over 70 percent of the population resides in rural areas,” Gao said. When he came two decades ago, everywhere he went was “dirty, messy and sloppy”, and police work, by and large carried out during bike visits to factories, schools and the countryside, constantly encountered obstacles.

Today, Luohe is already among the safest and cleanest of all cities provincially, and perhaps soon nationally too, as city administrators confidently envision. Youngsters, including the many rookie officers among the now 1,800-strong police force, respond to the image with a particular faith shared by the new urban generation across this country. But ultimately, it is local veterans like Gao who devoted their time and effort here that truly know about Luohe’s gradual evolution from its embryonic, unsettling pastime to the full-fledged and harmonious present shape.

“I love this city and I love my job, though it’s demanding,” Gao said, smiling. “Hey, this is just a great place to be.”

History buffs may not be entirely amazed by the vast remakes in and around the 100,000-square meter Yangguan museum, but imagine a Yangguan without it.

Before the museum opened four years ago, there was nothing around but ruins laid bare on the ever-dry Gobi. The relics were in separate locations miles away from one another, some hidden in the middle of the desert, others not even open to the public. A Sun Pass without a pass. And what would a regular visitor be left with by the end of the day other than disappointment, frustration and a pricy cab fare? Rest assured – there will be nothing else.

Some of you may not be the most faithful of preservationistss and would love spending time exploring the wild as it is. Plus, it’s easy even for lazy bones to point fingers at the museum and despise its fake renditions. But catch this: the place is built and operated by a history buff just like you, with money out of his own pockets.

Hats off and say hello to 51-year-old Ji Yongyuan, who wasn’t born to be a historic preservation expert. In fact, years after dedicating to the cause, he still doesn’t regard himself as one. 

Considering that he has spent most of his life in arts, the argument does hold some validity. Ji, a Dunhuang native, studied traditional Chinese painting in Tianjin and invested years studying the Mogao paintings. Then in 1983, he established the Dunhuang art academy to “explore the combination of art and business through an avenue of cultural development without state funds”.

As the 1980s gradually unfolded, his success escalated with the academy and another similar artists’ association. In 1990, Ji set up a Dunhuang institute under China art correspondence college and became its president. Over the next few years, he and the eight professors toured the 154 students and their work in the Far East on various roadshows to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea, earning both fame and wealth.

Virtually all the money he made in those over 20 years of art business went into the museum, which Ji began to build in 1999 with 18 million yuan of his own, a 10 million loan, and 9 million from the government.

“My interest slowly shifted to Yangguan since my first trip in 1991…unlike the Grottoes, protection, promotion and utilization of the Two Passes were very bad. Visitors all came with high hopes and left in utter disappointment. The ones who came were as sorry as the ones who didn’t,” he said.

“I hope our museum could be of use in the preservation and promotion of our relics and in boosting the local tourism industry.”

With over 4,000 relics on display and 2,800 others soon due to meet tourists, Ji’s museum is already among the field’s top-notch. But still, he isn’t too impressed.

“Total investment for the museum should be around 68 million yuan, but I’ve only managed to pour in half of it. On top of that, we’re not breaking even because besides the 600,000-700,000 yuan annual interest to the bank, I have to feed our 76 employees, who’re mostly under 30, train interns in local universities, gather more relics as well as develop the tourist district,” Ji said.

His museum hosted 20,000 visitors when it opened in 2003. Roughly 60,000 are expected this year, and if the number can reach 100,000 by 2010, the museum will get 8 to 10 million yuan per year, over 2 million of which could be spent on research and development.

That time hasn’t come yet, but Ji is happy enough with the fact that he’s right where he is supposed to be. “People who do museums are all idealists…doing something like this has always been my ideal. Now, that ideal has realized.” 

The Grottoes aren’t all there is to Dunhuang’s rich cultural relics. Second on visitors’ top wish list after the Mogao wonders is most likely Yangguan, or Sun Pass, erected over 2,000 years ago.

Why, one may wonder, would people be interested in a desolate sector of dusty ruins? The answer to that owes much to the site’s strategic contribution to the Silk Road, for which Dunhuang is known. Simply put, it is the Two Passes – Sun Pass and Yumenguan, or Jade Gate Pass – that closely secured the ancient corridor throughout the time in which it operated.

Until Han authorities set up official administration here in the dynasty’s western border crossings in 121 BC, Yangguan had been wasteland occupied by barbarians. Since then, massive migration and construction efforts changed its landscape, and laid out the socioeconomic foundation of and paved the way for the emergence of Dunhuang culture and the Silk Road.

“The Silk Road would not have existed without this period of development,” said Ji Yongyuan, head of Yangguan museum. “The emergence of Dunhuang culture, which is at once local and global, was never a historic contingency. What made it possible was precisely this 400-year preparatory stage before the first Grottoes were built in 366 AD.”

And although their visible cultural value is not directly apparent, the last of these historic remnants, the segregated parts of the Han Great Walls in particular, “are the living testimony of the period’s existence,” Ji said.

When it was first set up, Yangguan was the sole point of contact between China and the then 36 states that stood west of it. Even today, the saying that goes “You can walk your wide Yangguan streets and I’ll stick to my single plank bridge” is reminiscent of its prosperity in the Han and Tang dynasties, the two most cherished historical periods of feudal China.

Here, in the western customs of the bygone empires, widely dispersed relics have stood the test of time for over two millennia, mostly in their original dusty forms. But now, cultural preservation is at “a very critical phase”, Ji said.

“It isn’t that the country, the province or the city has not paid notice – but the level of attention is still not enough. Now is not the time for procedurals, but a time to rescue what we still have.”

He is speaking of remnants of the Great Wall, built some 2,100 years ago. At present, what’s left of it covers an area of over 100,000 square meters, with roughly 300 meters in length. According to Ji, “two rains will crumble it all down, and you won’t even find anything left afterwards.”

“It’ll fall down any time, and once it does, we’re all doomed.”

The state has only recently diverted attention from the Grottoes, where all eyes are on, to the preservation of Yangguan and the rest of what Ji called “dust relics”. Dunhuang’s remote location and dry weather already means that its relics have been much better naturally protected than the ones inland. But still, in Ji’s words, “protection has lagged behind devastation.”

Environment deterioration, especially declining water resources, has long been an issue in Dunhuang. Throughout the centuries, yesterday’s lakeland has gradually become today’s oasis, and past oasis transformed into present Gobi.

That situation has worsened in recent decades. Even thirty years back, spring openings and puddles were plentiful around the bank of Dunhuang’s Dang River, where the young Ji always ran. “I then worked for the local reservoir… springs and dense swamps were everywhere,” he recalled.

Now, the water has all dried up, leaving not a single trace of life on this piece of sandy earth.

“Water is the lifeblood of not only cultivation, but also humanity and culture. Preservation of water, the natural environment and the oasis must come first in the conservation of our relics.”

Of recent progress in securing water for Dunhuang, first and foremost is a 1.3 billion yuan project aimed at diverting water from Qinghai’s Kharteng River to the Dang River which has, after years of discussion, finally finished outline appraisal. When completed, the project is expected to meet most of Dunhuang’s irrigation needs.

Meanwhile, however, water is also being diverted from the diminishing Dang River to the neighboring drought-stricken Aksai Kazak autonomous county, and Shule River, another major watercourse, is according to Ji “all dry and may well be desertified within the next two years”.

On a positive note, a reservoir has been built to the east of Dunhuang, and its water may help curb further desertification. But for Ji, this endeavor and all water-saving irrigation efforts by the city alike are but “short-term, temporary measures” to longstanding problems.

“The most effective measure would be the state’s policy accommodation and fund support to develop non-agricultural sectors in Dunhuang, so that our livelihoods won’t be relied on the land alone. That’s the fundamental issue,” Ji said.

“In the past, we used water in terms of land – water was used in proportion to land. Now, we ought to do the reverse and cultivate land in terms of water – land should be used in proportion to the water we have.”

“Dunhuang is a small but delicate city, and it should stay that way instead of becoming an international metropolis. On the whole, the more developed we are as a nation, the more we will look back on the footsteps of our history. To do that, one has to come to Dunhuang. But if those footsteps are gone, they will never, ever be created again.”

Fifth grader Ma Donghai got up at six on the second day of school. Outside his home in the drought-stricken Huangshan Village, pouring rain has continued for five days, the largest and longest ever in the history of this distant mountain community 2,400 meters above sea level.

Donghai knows that a kid or two his age had already stopped going to school and are working washing dishes in the city, but he’s not going to be late – he has only missed less than a week of class per semester throughout elementary.

After breakfast, the 12-year-old loaded his bag with textbooks, homework and five buns, and took his time to trek the six kilometers along the sludgy paths to school. Without taking a zip of water, he was there by 8:30.

Donghai is among the 140 children in the four-year-old China Daily Readers First Hope School, or Zhouya School, located in Pingzhuang Village of the impoverished Dongxiang Autonomous County in the northwestern Gansu province.

Here, most of the 270,000 residents are Muslims of Dongxiang ethnicity, or in their own terms, Sartans. They are believed to be remnants of Central Asian craftsmen and women abandoned by Genghis Khan’s army in the early 13^th century. Attesting to this finding, they speak a language that bears resemblance to Mongolian, Arabic and Mandarin but has no written form.

The Sartans have suffered from drought-rooted poverty, poor roads and everything related therewith. Despite astounding recent improvements in education, for example, the average person above 15 in the county only had 2.7 years of school.

Yet harsh conditions also breed maturity. All of Zhouya’s 140 kids, including the first graders, go to school alone on foot with no water. Half of them live over four kilometers away.

Today, over 30 students couldn’t make it to class because of the rain. But maybe that’s not so much of a bad news for the three teachers – 39-year-old Zheng Yonghai, 22-year-old Ma Jinhua, and 21-year-old Ma Hailin – who live in and dedicate their lives to the school.

A daily rundown suffices to explain: class schedule is from nine to five, three courses in the morning and four in the afternoon. That 35-course weekly agenda is a minimum set by the local education bureau, but the three teachers can hardly find time to prepare for the different lessons, let alone leaving and marking the homework each day, which is also a must.

The school was fined 300 yuan two semesters ago for not meeting course requirements and will indeed be fined again for the last semester when education officials meet next week.

Besides waiting for the fine notice, Zheng, the principal, has also been expecting day and night for two new teachers, who will be assigned here shortly for a limited period. The rain has delayed their trip, and since Zheng is given no information about either of them, all he can do at this point is to wait.

Jinhua and Hailin, too, must have been crossing fingers for the arrival of their upcoming colleagues. For one, they’ll be able to cook their own meals when the two come, rather than relying on instant noodles and boiled potatoes every day.

Also, the newcomers can help take turns on duty over the weekend, so the rest can go back home. Hailin, who’s been teaching after he dropped out from junior high in 2003, lives locally and married last year. But Zheng gets to visit his wife and three-year-old daughter in Dongxiang only on a bi-weekly basis. And Jinhua, a former part-time trainee at a local teachers’ institute, is still a newbie on the job. Each Saturday, she has to walk 40 minutes to the nearest bus station, and take a four-hour trip back home in Hetan Township beside the Yellow River.

Water remains an area where the incoming teachers can’t help. Even with exceptional amounts of rainfall – what the locals call “heaven water” and use as the main water source – since this year, access to tap water is still non-existent in school. The limited size of kettles, on the other hand, means that the sum of available boiled water simply cannot serve over 100 children – even if it could, the teachers don’t have time to boil enough water anyway. And because underground water is severely bitter, the school’s only alternative water is from Dongxiang County, which is sold at 50 yuan per bucket of less than a cubic meter and requires hours on the road.

The school needs a minimum of 8 to 9 buckets of such water each summer month and 4 to 5 during other seasons to satisfy the kids’ survival needs. Although this does not include the water needed for showers, which the teachers consider to be absolutely out of the question, the monthly investment on water is still major money for Zhouya.

Officially, the elementary is subsidized at 90 yuan per student per semester by the county, but only half of those funds could actually manage to reach the school – and always at mid-semester. The 5,000-yuan semester gap Zhouya faces could be bridged had all funds been delivered, but the county government itself is deeply constrained by budgetary concerns. Dongxiang is, after all, among the poorest of the poorest rural counties in China today.

And for better or worse, even if there is enough water for most kids, allocation will be a problem. The students used to bring their own cups, but because water was never enough for all, the ones who got it were usually beaten up by those who didn’t.

Now, as a last resort, only two cups are used for the 140 students. During break time, each child will drink their bit and pass the cups to the next. Like their teachers, the kids are learning to wait for their turn.

Any of these hardships is enough to make even 12-year-olds frown and age. But Ma Donghai isn’t frowning, nor are his 20 classmates, who chuckle, giggle, smile and laugh through their present misfortunes and future uncertainties as they start chanting a popular army song:

“Amidst the cold winds and falling leaves/The army is a green flower/Dear comrades don’t you think of home/Don’t you think of mama.”

For these adorable children, school must have been that green flower.