Former official recounts story of a sandy landscape reshaped into lush hills

Liu Zaiyi still remembers the first time he stood on the Ganzhuer sandy land in Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

"If you had come here before, all you would see was white," said Liu, gesturing toward the horizon. "Just white sand, as far as the eye could reach."

Today, the same hills are covered in green. Liu, a former deputy director of the forestry bureau in New Barag Left Banner, tells a story of a landscape transformed, and a man who left his footprints on every patch of sand.

The root of the problem stemmed from the 1940s and 1950s. Locals, needing soil to build houses, came with horse-carts and dug small pits. Over time, wind connected those pits into larger patches. Driven by seasonal winds, the sandy land shifted back and forth. Over a 20-year period, a few small hollows turned into 13,000 hectares of drifting desert.

In 2009, the Hulunbuir government made desert control a priority. Liu was on the front lines.

"We used straw checkerboards — what the world now calls the 'Chinese magic cube'," he said. The technique relied on two key elements. Along the perimeter, taller green belts — known as "edge locking" — were planted to reduce sand drift. In the space between these belts, workers laid straw checkerboards and reed barriers to stabilize the ground.

The method was simple, low-cost and effective, Liu said.

The results speak for themselves, with the entire sandy land now fully restored.

The transformation is not just environmental — it is personal. Where once there was only white, there is now green. Where once there was despair, there is pride.

"Now I can tell you with pride, every single hill is green," Liu said.