When the Desert Sands Run Out
A desert in northwest China is poised to disappear thanks to greening
Those who haven’t been to the Mu Us Desert in northwest China may not have an opportunity to do so as the desert is disappearing from the map. According to recent statistics from the Shaanxi provincial forestry bureau, 93.24 percent of the desert land in Yulin, a city in Shaanxi Province in northwest China where half of the desert lies, has been conquered, enabling the province’s green area to advance 400 km northward.
The feat has been achieved thanks both to national anti-desertification policies and the toil of generations of eco-warriors living in the region.
The Mu Us sprawls over 42,200 square km between Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, lying north of the Great Wall. In Mongolian, mu us means barren land where nothing can grow. Yulin was dubbed “desert city.”
However, the area was no desert in ancient times. It used to be grazing land with luxuriant grass and abundant water for sheep and cattle. Since the Tang Dynasty (618-907), it began to degrade because of excessive farming and overgrazing and years of war.
In modern times, the Mu Us, one of the four largest deserts in China, began to move southward and passed the Great Wall, invading Yulin. Local pastures faced serious desertification, salinization and degradation and the villagers had to retreat as the desert advanced. In the early days of the People’s Republic of China, Yulin had only 0.9 percent of forest cover. It became an urgent task to halt the sands.
Women on the frontline
Yuyang District in Yulin was once caught between a rock and a hard place. Located between the Mu Us Desert and the Loess Plateau, it had only 10 percent farmland, with the desert gobbling up 70 percent of its land and high mountains occupying the remaining 20 percent.
In Bulanghe, a township in Yuyang, in the 1960s and 1970s, 80 percent of the township was desert. It was ravaged by sandstorms throughout the year and each time a storm occurred, the flying sand would sharply reduce visibility. There were hardly any green plants except for a few camel thorns, a spiny, shrub-like plant. Many local people had left the town to make a living elsewhere.
To fight desertification, a women’s militia was established in 1974. There were 54 young women in the group, with an average age of 18. Since then, over 380 women have joined the afforestation efforts, contributing their youth and labor to taming the desert.
He Li’e, the third leader of the militia, recalled in an interview with China News Service how her team once spent an entire afternoon planting saplings under a blazing sun only to have a strong wind at night blow away all the saplings. The girls cried and then they dug holes again and replanted the trees.
All those sweat and tears have paid off for today, the town is full of green trees.
Shi Guangyin, a 68-year-old villager from Dingbian, a county in Yulin, suffered the same sandstorms as a child. His family had moved nine times due to the frequent sandstorms but to no avail.
In 1984, the government introduced a policy allowing individuals to manage woods, barren mountains and deserts after signing contracts so as to encourage afforestation and improve the environment. Shi quit his job as head of a farm and became the first farmer to contract degraded land to fight desertification. He contracted 2 square km of the desert together with six other households. He also founded the first farmers’ sand control company in China.
In the beginning, Shi faced a severe fund shortage. In the first year, he had to sell his livestock and take loans from rural credit cooperatives to raise 120,000 yuan ($16,881) to buy saplings. Luckily, there was ample rain that year and 85 percent of the trees he planted survived.
Zhu Xuyu, a forestry expert in Yulin, told China News Service that the Mu Us is easier to fight back compared with other deserts. It is relatively small, only one eighth the size of the Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwest China, the largest desert in China. Also, it still has precipitation and a milder climate, which raises the chances of the saplings’ survival.
The success bolstered Shi’s confidence and he contracted another 39 square km of the desert, recruiting nearly 500 people to beat it back.
This time, the land he had contracted was tough to crack as it had over 1,000 sand ridges. In the first and second year, most of the trees they planted were damaged by sandstorms.
Shi looked for new planting techniques. He managed to fix the sand, planting shrubs to give extra protection to the saplings. This time 80 percent of the saplings survived.
By 2019, Shi had treated 167 square km of the desert and grown a 65-km green belt south of the Mu Us Desert.
From poverty to plenty
In addition to afforestation, Shi’s company expanded to other industries such as livestock breeding and potato cultivation to help local people get out of poverty. In Shilisha, a new village established in 2000 for people relocated from areas with harsh natural conditions, Shi has been the chief of the local committee of the Communist Party of China since 2015. Under him, roads have been built and the village’s power grid has been renovated. Villagers have access to tap water and the Internet. Shi now plans to develop wolfberry and peach farming in the village to increase people’s income.
It is a similar story in Maotuan, another village in Yulin. Over 40 years ago, the village used to be surrounded by sand. Guo Chengwang, a villager in his 90s who played a role similar to Shi’s, told China News Service how it used to be buffeted by strong winds that blow in sand that would bury the crops. It was hard for the farming village to fill its stomach.
In 1985, motivated by the government policy, Guo contracted the desert land around the village and started to plant poplars. The trees gradually took root and clusters of woods began to form. After Guo retired, his children continued the job and eventually, the family turned 30 square km of desert into woods.
“While our grandfather primarily grew poplars, we mainly plant the Scots pine. Last year we planted apple trees and they will bear fruit in a few years,” Guo’s eldest grandson Jianjun told China News Service. Today the villagers no longer lose sleep over sandstorms and the village has become a vegetable production base.
According to a report on China’s air quality from 2013 to 2018 published by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment in 2019, in the past six decades, the days of sandstorms in north China in spring, from March to May, were on the decline.
The number of sandstorm days in Yulin has dropped from 24 days in 2000 to almost nil at present, and the number of slightly sandy days has also decreased from 100 days in 2000 to fewer than 10 days now, local paper Shaanxi Daily reported.
The improved environment has also brought Yulin other tangible benefits. The once barren area has become fertile with stable high crop yield. Yulin’s vegetable growing, animal husbandry, sapling and tourism industries are thriving. The city has become the largest production base for potatoes, the second largest grain producer and the largest sheep breeding base in Shaanxi. Yulin’s potatoes and dates are sold not only across China but also overseas.