Andrew Jacobs, As Winter Nears, China Is Blanketed in Green; Cabbage hoarding offers conmfort to an older generation. New York Times, Dec 12, 2013 (under the heading Beijing Journal).
Note: "The vegetal escarpments sometimes tower waist-high in public stairwells, competing for space with rusting bicycles and neatly stacked piles of the honeycomb coal briquettes that still heat countless homes here.
(a) vegetal (adj): of or about vegetable
(b) escarpment (n): "a long cliff or steep slope separating two comparatively level or more gently sloping surfaces and resulting from erosion or faulting" www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/escarpment
Can't comprehend the definition? See the scheme in
escarpment
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escarpment
(from the Italian scarpa, shoe)