Taiyuan is only a few hundred kilometres south of bustling, modern Beijing, but could be a world away. Decaying grey and brown buildings and yellow-brown wheat fields dominate the Shanxi capital's landscape. From the air, the city resembles a mouthful of rotting teeth.
Because Shanxi produces most of China's coal, Taiyuan is also the mainland's most polluted city. Coal plants belch out giant, cauliflower-shaped soot clouds. The wide grey roads melt seamlessly into the bleak grey sky. Miners in Mao caps and drab, grey clothing bicycle slowly to work and home, seemingly unexcited about reaching either destination.
This is the place Matthew Nelson, a manager at hedge fund DAC Management, left Wall Street for.
The tall, affable Iowa native, an alumnus of Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan, now specialises in buying non-performing loans - debts Chinese firms have racked up but cannot repay. His employer, founded by American former Arthur Andersen accountant Phil Groves, is Hong Kong-based. Still, Nelson spends most of his working days in Taiyuan.
While DAC owns loans attached to failed firms throughout China, Shanxi is a huge source of business. Despite the coal bosses zooming around in 4X4s with blacked out windows, the province has had its fair share of economic woes. It was one of several northern and western regions that became blighted with bad debts in the early 1990s, when scores of state-owned enterprises failed. As unpaid staff rioted en masse, their employers sometimes scored easy cash by halting bank loan payments. In 2003, Shanxi was ravaged by Sars.
Shivering in the sub-zero cold and standing a clear foot taller than most of Taiyuan's inhabitants, Nelson pulls his baseball cap closer over his blond hair as he trudges through the snow in Taiyuan's lacklustre city centre. He is viewing assets owned by DAC's debtors that the fund wants to seize and sell off.
These include a lavish, upscale karaoke bar, frequented by local coal tycoons who must spend at least 1,500 yuan (HK$1,705) a night on alcohol and girls to book a room, the lobby of a four-star hotel, a shopping mall, an apartment block and a car park.