Word: patches
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...area, planting on average four roadside bombs a day while unleashing periodic hails of small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and mortar shells in the direction of the small base. Four guard towers stand roughly 100 paces apart at corners of the outpost, framing a walled-off patch of muddy earth littered with shattered concrete and junked vehicles...
...Emerald Riverside. It sits on the banks of a tributary that dumps into the Huangpu, the river that cuts Shanghai in two about 28 miles (45 km) to the northeast. On that dreary afternoon I gazed out to the other side of the river, looking at the only significant patch of land for miles that was not yet being developed - about five acres (20,000 sq m) of green that local farmers still used to grow watermelons, which they then sold to the migrant workers building this town. On the far bank there was a ramshackle one-room brick house...
...stood on the deck that day and watched one of the farmers who worked the watermelon patch, an older woman who would later introduce herself to us as Liu Yi, as she stared back at me across the river. I remember thinking to myself, My god, what must be going through her mind? Not only is the land she works on about to disappear, but there's this foreigner standing over there staring at her. Where did he come from and, more to the point, what in the world is he doing out here? The short answer is that...
...expensive, a phenomenon similar to the one that reshaped the U.S. in the aftermath of World War II has begun to take hold. That is the inevitable desire among a rapidly expanding middle class for a little bit more room to live, at a reasonable price; maybe a little patch of grass for children to play on, or a whiff of cleaner air as the country's cities become ever more polluted...
...where her husband would continue to try to make a living shuttling workers around. Lin came over to our house one evening just before leaving; Joyce was giving her some of Abby's old baby clothes. We sat up on our deck, overlooking the river and the ever-shrinking patch of green on the other side. I asked her whether, and when, she and her husband might settle down - and what they might do, and where. She just laughed. "Oh, we'd like to live back home in Hefei [Anhui's capital] some day, but we don't know when...