Fuxin

The new cancellations - announced in recent days by the cities of Fengcheng, Fuxin, Gaizhou and Huludao - mean projects designed to produce over 18.5 million tonnes of the substance used to make aluminum metal will not go ahead as planned.

One day later, the Huludao government said it had noted netizens’ concerns over its own alumina refinery and decided to cancel it “in accordance with environmental-protection related rules,” while Fuxin said it was halting negotiations and cancelling its alumina project.

Wei Jing, a mobile phone company worker from the northeastern city of Fuxin, seemed less fazed: she had brought her entire family for a day-trip into despotism.

Mr. Sun’s “Mythological Time” is a surreal, at times overweening animation set in his northern hometown, Fuxin, which was once home to the largest open-pit coal mine in Asia.

Mr. Sun sometimes travels to Fuxin, where he sits outside with a pad of paper “to draw its factories, its mountains, its backyards.”