Pulitzer Center Untold Stories

China: Final Thoughts from the Desertification Train

Sean Gallagher, for the Pulitzer Center

A lone farmer rides his tractor through a small rural village.

Winding my way along China's network of rail lines through the northern provinces of Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Gansu and Xinjiang, I have travelled over 4000 kilometers over the past 6 weeks, witnessing first hand the severity of desertification in China, just from my carriage window. The route I have followed, although made up of a number of trains, has been dubbed China's 'desertification train', as it snakes through some of the hardest hit land, suffering as a result of this increasingly severe phenomenon.

China: Science Vs The Desert

Sean Gallagher, for the Pulitzer Center

Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous region. In the Turpan desert botanical garden. the indistint Tamarix hispida is cultivated and researched as it is a species perfectly suited to life in the desert, flourishing in saline soils and being unable to grow in the shade.

The cool spring winds are blowing in the northern-central regions of Xinjiang province in mid-May. Winding their way through the leafy roads of this legendary oasis town, they provide a cooling respite from the slowly increasing temperatures which climb to nearly 50 degrees centigrade in the summer months, earning the region the name of the 'Land of Fire'. Like many towns in this region, Turpan is surrounded on all sides by dry and hostile expanses of arid land, however nestling in this oasis, is one of China's leading centres into research aimed at fighting the expanding sands.   

Lying in the second lowest depression in the world, at 154 metres below sea level, the Turpan desert botanical garden is China's largest and is at the centre of the race to research and study the effects of desertification and how it can be stopped. By growing and cultivating  sand-fixing plants, the researchers of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences are attempting to find ways in which productivity can be restored to arid land and investigate the success of plants to stop moving deserts in their tracks.

China: The Sea of Death

Sean Gallagher, for the Pulitzer Center

Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Dead poplar trees stand on the fringes of the Taklamakan desert. As the desert moves, whole swathes of trees can be eaten by the sand, reducing areas to forest graveyards.

The ‘Sea of Death’ is the not so affectionate name that has been given by the Chinese people to the Taklamakan desert, a desert of such epic proportions and intimidating size, that its name in the local Uygur language translates as ‘You can go in, but you will never come out’. As my car passes through the gate indicating my entrance to this treacherous land, I can only hope that my chances of exiting have been improved by the relatively new 500km of trans-desert highway that stretches endlessly before me from one side of the desert to the other. 

After the great Sahara desert of northern Africa, the Taklamakan is the second biggest moving –sands desert in the world. The size of Germany, its immense proportions have often proved impenetrable to travelers and for many hundreds of years in Chinese history, this lifeless land was left alone to the hardy few who dared to venture in.

China: Abandoned Cities

Sean Gallagher, for the Pulitzer Center

Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Human remains scatter the floor in the abandoned city of Yinpan. A result of a combination of natural erosion revealing graves and disturbance by grave robbers.

It is estimated that nearly 40 cities have been abandoned as a result of desertification in Northwest China in the past 2000 years. The old city of Yinpan, which lies approximately 300km east of the modern city of Korla in China’s western Xinjiang province, is one of those cities. Lying on the fringes of China’s most formidable desert, the Taklamakan, its location is one of the harshest and most remote in all of China. 

Approximately 2000 years ago, the city of Yinpan was a successful, thriving and eclectic city. Welcoming travelers from across Asia, plying the legendary Silk Road, the city was populated by a diverse mix of ethnic groups originating from the now-known Middle East, Mongolia and Western China. The city’s exact beginnings are unclear, but what is known, is that nature and man inadvertently conspired to fuel the city’s rapid demise some 1500 years ago.

China: Disappearing Water

Sean Gallagher, for the Pulitzer Center

Gansu Province. Dry and cracked earth litters the Minqin Oasis.

Sandwiched unforgivingly between the mighty Tengger desert to the south and east, and the equally menacing Badain Jaran desert to the north and west, surface water has long since dried up in the dry and ravaged Minqin Oasis in Gansu Province. Problems lie not only with Minqin's harsh location however, but also in the ways local people have been using the little water that remains.

In the past two decades, the area has become a national symbol for China's fight against disappearing water, as approximately 50 percent of the area has now turned into desert. Recent estimates put the drop in underground water levels close to 15 metres over the past 50 years. A figure which is having worrying consequences for the region.

China: Desert Playground

Sean Gallagher, for the Pulitzer Center

Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. Shapotou. Tourists enjoy themselves on the 100 metre high sand dunes that make the resort so unique.

As I enter the desert resort of Shapotou, signs beside the road boldly announce my passing into "The Desert Capital Of The World". Whilst seemingly quite an ambitious claim, the dramatic convergence of the Tennger desert,  the Yellow River and the "Fragrant Mountain" range, has created one of the most spectacular natural settings in all of China.

The secret is out on this unique location however, as is evident by the line of buses outside the entrance, all carrying groups of tourists eagerly anticipating a day of fun in the sand.

China: Yellow Skies

Sean Gallagher, for the Pulitzer Center

 
All images: Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. Shapotou.

You can smell a sandstorm. As I woke this morning, my throat was drier than normal and the smell of dust and sand had crept into my room whilst I was sleeping. I opened my curtains expecting to see the Yellow River out of my window but all I could see was a haze of yellow light.

Sandstorms have been one of the major problems as a result of desertification in China. As the spring winds blow, dry and degraded topsoil is picked up and thrown into the air to be carried in immense clouds of sand and dust.

China: Environmental Refugees

Sean Gallagher, for the Pulitzer Center

Ningxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture. Hongsibao. Mrs Ma, an 'environmental refugee' who moved from the dry mountainous Guyuan area 2 years ago. In her restaurant, the idylic poster which hangs on the wall, reflects her optimism for the future of the town.

Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region is a small province lying in Loess highlands of north-central China. Dry and desert-like, it is China's poorest province and is the least visited by outsiders.

I am here this week to visit the isolated town of Hongsibao, which lies 150km south of the province's capital Yinchuan, completely surrounded by dry and arid land. Ten years ago, this town didn't exist.

China: The Black Disaster

Sean Gallagher, for the Pulitzer Center

Inner Mongolia. Xilamuren. The Inner Mongolian grasslands in the area Xilamuren, north of the province's capital Hohhot.

“The dryness affects our lives a lot. We call it the ‘black disaster’, which means there is no grass. On the grassland, we are afraid of this disaster”, says Zamusu, a farmer who has lived on the central grasslands of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous region, in Northern China, for the whole of his life. “When I was young, there was much more grass than now”, he continues, in what seems to be a statement echoing across the 70 million acres (28million ha) of the gently undulating grasslands that dominate the Xilamuren steppes north of the region’s capital, Hohhot.