A Blooming Desert
One plant changes the destiny of a town in the Gobi Desert
For 42-year-old Zeng Guo, sandstorms are a lasting horrible memory. He was born and raised in the Gobi Desert in Alahake, a town in Altay, northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
In the past, residents had no way to resist a sandstorm. As a result, when it came, they were forced to hide indoors. “The problem of sandstorms was severe in the Gobi Desert. Every three or five days, a wave of sandstorms would arrive, lasting five to seven days. Standing in my family’s field, I could only see our patch of land; the rest of the world was full of yellow sand,” Zeng told Beijing Review.
But now, through planting gaubau kender, a special herb found only in the Gobi Desert in Altay, the once sandstorm-torn town has turned green, with its residents having increasing incomes. Zeng, now a manager of a plantation base of gaubau kender, is one of the beneficiaries from this change.
In Alahake, over 85 percent of the 11,500 registered households are from the Kazakh ethnic group, whose main production model is animal husbandry. The town is famous for a salt lake which has been the source of salt for herders since ancient times. Located in the desert, without a water supply, the salt content of the lake water is relatively high, affected by a strong evaporation. In the mid1960s, salt fields established here were able to produce 600-700 tons of salt for livestock per year.
Because of the natural environment, vegetation to support livestock, like cattle and sheep, is insufficient. Thus, in order to eat, these animals often dig up plant roots. Consequently, the development of the ecological environment in the area is trapped in a vicious cycle and what the residents of Alahake were faced with was a huge survival crisis.
Beneficial flowers
Two years after Zeng was born, and owing to the implementation of the reform and opening-up policy, Zeng’s family contracted for more than 2 mu (0.13 hectares) of farming land and later gradually rented some more land from herders.
After getting married, Zeng took the load in the family from his father and continued to work hard on their land. He and his wife specialized in growing sunflowers that could be irrigated with light salt water. They earned about 30,000 yuan ($4,300) a year in around 2005.
But this type of work meant a lot of uncertainty for the couple. Farmers do not have the ability to forecast fluctuating crop trends. Affected by various factors, the harvest for some years did not lead to profits, as the purchase price plummeted. Suffering from the risks of the traditional agriculture industry, Zeng once came up with the idea of giving up farming and finding a job in the town, which he failed to put into practice then because at the time, there were no enterprises in the town. Moreover, he did not have the heart to leave his aging parents whom he felt a duty to care for.
Meanwhile, in Shenzhen, thousands of kilometers away from Altay, Liu Qizhen, a