A bagel is one of the last things you’d expect to find in the kind of isolated regions where I travel in my work as a photographer of indigenous peoples — which is a problem, because I love bagels and suffer if a week goes by without one. But on a recent expedition, I was driving through remote northwestern China photographing the Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people who for centuries have lived on their land, oblivious while international borders changed around them. I pulled the car over at a street market in a rural village outside the city of Kashgar near the Pakistani border. As I stepped out of the car I couldn’t believe my eyes or nose — before me was a pushcart piled high with fresh, hot bagels.

I bought one and savored every bite as I considered this completely unexpected connection to home.

Now I’m usually the only foreigner in these out-of-the-way places, so I always attract a crowd. Seeing my interest in their local delicacy, a friendly mob pushed and shoved me into the nearest house, where the local populace could not wait to give me the Grand Bagel Tour…

Despite high expectations, rural land reform wasn’t even mentioned in the CCP Plenum’s closing statement:

BEIJING — A funny thing happened on the way to the Third Plenary Session of the 17th Central Committee, where China’s Communist Party leaders were expected to finally enact a bold land reform program allowing farmers eventually to buy, sell or lease their fields.

Coverage of reform issues had been stepped up in the official press. And President Hu Jintao made a high-profile trip to rural Anhui province, where state media said he told farmers that they would be able to transfer their land rights.

Yet by the time the closed-door meeting wrapped up Sunday, the issue had all but disappeared from public view. It wasn’t even mentioned in the final communique from the 368-member decision-making body…

Don Lee writes about his own life in Shanghai amid food scares:

A friend here who frequently travels to Los Angeles returned to Shanghai last week with a suitcase stuffed with infant formula to give to his Chinese staff members. If you see less formula on your supermarket shelves, you’ll know why.

Though the government has tried to tone down news reports on the crisis, the topic is on everybody’s mind, if not his or her lips. My barber said he was feeding his baby formula from South Korea. My Chinese tutor, father of a 6-month-old boy, said he hoped his wife would breast-feed for as long as possible. If not, they could hire a wet nurse, though they are in high demand now.

Since moving to Shanghai in the summer of 2004, my wife and I (we have three children) have tried to be careful about what we eat and where. We avoid street vendors, red meat and unpeeled fruit. Before ordering at restaurants, we tend to check out the restroom, figuring that if it’s not clean, the kitchen probably isn’t either…