At China's Frontiers | A Young Engineer's 14-Year Battle Against the 'Sea of Death'

(ECNS)--Blinding yellow sand stretches everywhere, with not a blade of grass in sight. The Kubuqi Desert, China’s seventh-largest desert, was once known as the “Sea of Death.” Yet Tian Wang, a desertification-control engineer born in the 1990s, has put down roots here for 14 years.

Over 14 years, every tree he has planted speaks for this sandy land. And the wind and sand have left their mark on him. Some colleagues joke that he has turned the desert green, yet the desert has worn him down. He just smiles and says, “If I can make the desert a little greener, I don’t mind becoming more weathered by sand.” Today, thanks to the continuous efforts of generations of people working together to combat desertification, more than 6,000 square kilometers of the Kubuqi Desert have been covered in green. For every inch the sand retreats, the green gains an inch. This is the answer Tian Wang and his fellow desert warriors have written for Kubuqi.