Fighting desertification with forestation in China's Inner Mongolia
- By Wang Yiming
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E-mail China.org.cn, September 18, 2020
The 57-year-old Gao Eryun's home is located in Guanjing village, Dalad Banner county of Ordos city, north China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region. This small village is surrounded by the Kubuqi Desert, the seventh-largest desert in China.
Following his father's steps to plant drought-resistant trees, Gao Eryun has witnessed the changes in Guanjing village over the past 30 years: local people's efforts have turned the once-barren land into a lush oasis, tree by tree, patch by patch.
In the 1980s, the village was plagued by desertification, with 22,000 hectares of severely degraded land.
"When I was a teenager, the shifting sands almost encroached on my home and farm. Despite my family putting in much effort into growing crops, we could only harvest 10 to 15 kilograms of poor-quality glutinous millet each year," Gao Eryun recalled.
"There was no electricity and it was hard to extract water from our deep-water well. Many of the 1,000 villagers gradually moved elsewhere due to the difficult living conditions," Gao Eryun said. "We had a tough time then."
While Gao Eryun's sisters left the village, he and his father Gao Linshu chose to stay put.
Gao Linshu was known for helping the first tree planted in the village survive, though just for a few years. The name Linshu, translated as "trees and forests" in Chinese, embodies the previous generations' yearning for green pastures.
In 1980, a meeting was convened by the Ordos government to reiterate the importance of afforestation. A year later, the government introduced policies to encourage the planting of grass and trees, promising that those who successfully irrigated the barren land and planted trees would own everything that they grew.
While other villagers were reticent, Gao Linshu quickly got to work and became the first to contract over 50 hectares of the waste, sandy land to plant trees.
After trading two sheep for a cart of drought-resistant salix saplings, Gao Linshu led the family to busy themselves planting the young trees.
"When the strong wind blew the saplings out of the ground, we gathered them up and planted them back again and again. The efforts seemed to be in vain until the fourth year, when we finally saw some green," Gao Eryun said.
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