Hefei is nowheresville. Even in China, lots of people have never heard of it. Yet arrive at the airport, an hour's flight south of Beijing, and it will take you 40 minutes to drive down a six-lane highway and into the heart of a city of 5 million people that is twice the size of Paris.
As with so many Chinese cities, half of Hefei is a building site. So the drive from the airport will take you through rubble-strewn streets that, in the rains of last month, lay half submerged by great puddles of oily, brown water.
In recent years thousands of makeshift shacks have been cleared from the streets and the authorities are now moving on to the second stage of their "beautification" plan. Traffic on the road outside the cheap hotels by the railway station negotiates both the puddles and potholes of the old road and the gaping scars where its replacement is being laid. Drilling starts at 5am and goes on until midnight. Noise pollution, as elsewhere in China, is not an issue.
To say Hefei is nondescript is unfair not just its residents but to a hundred similar cities across China. Until a decade or so ago, it was a rural backwater, known for canny peasant wisdom, rustic food and hospitality. Now the old and the new sit uneasily together. A Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant sells breakfasts for 20 times the price of the meat and pepper-filled bread rolls sold on well-patronised stalls a few metres away.
The sudden flow of wealth and the endemic corruption manifest themselves in odd ways. Many locals pay substitutes to take driving tests for them; leaving many of the city's new rich with big cars but only the most basic driving skills. Reverse parking their brand new Audi means summoning aid, usually from a passerby or, even better, a taxi driver.
Hefei is the capital of Anhui province, a green swath of rice and wheat fields stretching hundreds of miles north of the Yangtze river where all the contradictions in the Chinese approach to the environment can be seen. Anhui is becoming an industrial powerhouse as businesses move inland from the coast in search of cheap labour.
Hefei and its surroundings have become one of the most heavily polluted areas of China. Just to the south of the city is the vast freshwater Chao lake. Last month, the lake filled with stinking algae, provoked by the summer heat and chemicals from local factories and fields dumped or washed by recent rains into its tributaries. In recent years, the lake has become so contaminated that drinking water supplies have had to be shut off on several occasions.
"Every year it gets worse," said Xu Jia Wu, a 46-year-old fisherman as he set out to trawl for shrimp on the lake from the village of Tianjxi. "I remember when I was a kid and you could drink the water. It was so clear. Now it stinks and there are less and less fish."
Central government is aware of the problem – as it is aware of the "cancer villages", the noxious smog of metropolises such as Beijing or Chongqing, and the rivers full of mercury, detergent or acids. Campaigners and experts talk of the substantial progress that has been made in recent years. Environmental protection is promoted and widely understood as essential to the future development of the country. Legal frameworks have been put in place to force companies to disclose polluting leaks. Journalists have been allowed - at least before the Olympic Games got too close – to report on environmental scandals.
But two main questions remain: is anyone really prepared to risk the economic growth that in part guarantees the Communist party's power for the long-term benefits of greener development? And, if the answer to the first question is yes, can central government actually impose its will in even relatively close provinces such as Anhui?
On the outskirts of Hefei, a vast new industrial zone is being constructed. Huge chemical plants, an industrial dairy, metal workshops and blocks of flats lie interspersed with rice and wheat fields. The new laws have had some effect with five local factories – out of tens of thousands - in the Hefei province recently sanctioned by the State Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa).
The village of Xian Zhuang lies between two of the factories that were closed down, both for discharging improperly treated wastewater. "Before there was some problem that affected some of the villagers but now that is finished, said one official at the local branch of the Sepa. He did not give anymore details. If knowledge is power, these villagers have little of either.
"No one told us anything about the factories. They just built them there," said villager Li Yun Feng, 51. "And then they shut them. That's all we know."
Both factories are set to re-open after new checks, according to local reports. This does not reassure the villagers. They worry that local officials will have been paid off to turn a blind eye.
"It's the smoke that's the problem, not the water anyway," said one farmer. "It gets in your nose. You don't feel well. I worry for our children but what good does it do to worry? No one is really very bothered about us."
The destruction and reconstruction of much of Hefei benefits some in unexpected ways however. Ameng Cheng, 50, has earned his living for the last 12 months collecting scrap metal from the rubble of the worksites. With his hammer, he can earn 100 yuan a month (£7.50), enough to eat a few vegetables a day and live in a single squalid shared room 15 miles outside the city. "My family is very poor. We are rice farmers but can't make any profit," he explained. "So I am here to make my fortune."
That fortune is some way away. "I am not optimistic. I don't have much hope," he said. "I just try to survive."
