A green oasis raising incomes
A burgeoning forestry sector is helping to provide jobs for people battling 'cancer of the land', as Yang Wanli reports from Ordos, Inner Mongolia autonomous region.
Life in a desert is the polar opposite of depictions in movies and photo collections in which groups of merchants swathed in white robes sit on the backs of camels and sway gracefully back and forth across golden sand dunes.
In most instances, living in a desert means a constant struggle against hunger and poverty, maybe for an entire lifetime. However, in one small village in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region in North China, the people of the desert have refused to accept this fate. In the past 40 years they have achieved a mission impossible - "greening" the desert to make it habitable for generations to come.
