As ever, there are plenty of well-known cities below Lanzhou on today's air quality rankings (Dec 14), published by the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

Out of 86 locations, Lanzhou came 54th. Here is a selection of those places with worse air quality. The ranking is in brackets:

Lanzhou (54)
Xiamen (55)
Qingdao (58)
Guangzhou (60)
Tianjin (61)
Beijing (66)
Urumqi (73)
Chongqing (76)
Xi'an (79)
Harbin (81)
Chengdu (82)
Zhangjiajie (85)

That's not to say the air is pristeen here at the moment, just another reminder that Lanzhou is a pretty average city these days, when it comes to pollution. Here is a photo of Anning District, taken today from the hills:

An incredible sight, in the dry hills to the north of Anning District. We actually walked through the construction site a year ago, on an ill-advised short-cut during a long countryside walk. There was a precarious descent to what is now the beginner's slope, and then we had to walk ankle-deep in sand for several hundred metres, dodging huge earth-moving machinery.

Anyway, it opened two weeks ago, although it is still not quite finished. The advanced slope will open next week. 

The instructors were trained in Heilongjiang, in northeast China, which has some long-established ski resorts. And for those with big feet, their boots go up to size 48.

World AIDS Day was on December 1, so this post is rather overdue. I took the camera out hoping to see buses with big red ribbons, as I did last year. 

No luck. But I did see these posters by a bus stop. 

The 1st poster is an advertisement for AIDS tests, by the Centre for Disease Control. The slogans are: 
-  Take the initiative to get tested 
-   Reduce worry
-   Control the spread 
-   Healthy life

The 2nd poster tells people that "using condoms greatly reduces the risk of contracting HIV through sex."

The main slogan is "Where there is safety, there is fun!"

There are some stats along the bottom. Including:
- In 2007, 56.9% of new HIV sufferers caught the disease through sex
- 0.5 million people don't know they are HIV+
- 70% of sufferers are aged between 20-39 years old
 

There was plenty of coverage on the TV. Here is a photo of a current affairs presenter on the news channel: