Jake van der Kamp is on holiday.
THE CENTRAL CHINESE city of Taiyuan is famous for coal, coke, iron, steel - and prostitutes. According to official press estimates, the city has 40,000 of them, of whom half come from the three northeast provinces, 10,000 from Sichuan and the rest from other areas.
'My father and mother were both laid off,' explained one, 20, from the northeast province of Heilongjiang. 'So I came to Taiyuan in February. I earn 300 to 400 yuan a day and send my parents 400 yuan a month. If I sent more, they would become suspicious. My plan is to work in this business for five years, become rich and become a professional woman.'
An expressway from Beijing means people from the capital can reach Taiyuan in five hours, enabling them to spend the weekend enjoying its entertainment industry. It has boomed in Taiyuan since 1994 for the same reasons that it prospered in the northeast industrial city of Shenyang, which had an estimated 100,000 'ladies of the night' until last year, when a police crackdown followed the arrest of its mayor and a dozen other city government members for corruption.
Both Taiyuan and Shenyang are in China's rust belt, heavy industry cities that prospered in the Maoist era but in the past 20 years have fallen behind the boom towns in the south and east.
The power industry and processing of primary raw materials account for more than 70 per cent of Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi province, which has the richest coal reserves in China. State firms account for more than 80 per cent of its tax revenue. It has attracted little foreign investment and private domestic investment is limited.
An official survey of air quality in 47 major cities found that Taiyuan's was the most polluted, leading local people to joke bitterly - 'we provide light and heat to others and keep the filth and dirt for ourselves'. Taiyuan generates most of the electricity used in Beijing and Tianjin.