Once-barren Ejine Banner becomes green oasis

The once-barren terrain in Ejine Banner, Inner Mongolia autonomous region, is gradually being covered with a blanket of green — a new vitality brought by an eight-year effort to plant trees.

Ejine Banner is located in the westernmost part of the region, with an area of 114,600 square kilometers and a population of around 30,000. In the early days, it was an oasis of water, grass and forest, but the environment gradually deteriorated for various reasons.

When Wang Jian'gang of Beijing arrived in August 2015, he had the impression that it was vast and sparsely populated, that the ecological system and environment were fragile, that the wind and sand were taking over and that there was perpetual drought.

That year, Wang invested more than 13 million yuan ($1.95 million) to lease more than 3,400 hectares of Gobi Desert in an area administered by Dongfeng, Ejine Banner, and he began to plant native tree species — suosuo, or sacsaoul.