In a town on the edge of the Gobi desert is a sign in English and Chinese that reads “Oil Holy Land.” Nearby, a preserved drilling rig marks the spot of China’s first commercial oil well. All around, coated in snow on an April morning, are streets of abandoned buildings, their rooms littered with trash, torn wallpaper and broken furniture and smashed window panes. This is Yumen, “the cradle of China’s oil industry,” that has become a totem for China’s changes over the past four decades—from a time of sacrifice and ideology to one of the entrepreneurs and the pursuit of wealth, from the old economy to the new, from fossil fuels to renewable energy. As the old town dies, a new city center is rising an hour and a half’s drive to the west, […]