early morning busyness in Keshiketengqi's main street



patches of sunlight into stunning scenery - rugged mountains, inhabited valleys, terraced hillsides





The first foreigners I encounter, more than a month after leaving Beijing, step out of a minivan just as I pass by. They seem to be in a hurry, not really noticing me, rushing to set up their cameras. After the train has passed by and shutters have rattled, they explain me they share an obsession for steam trains, and that they've come from all over the world (Australia, Oregon, Mexico, Scotland) to this particular valley between Balinyouqi and Wangniuteqi to take pictures of the "last regularly operating steam train in the world".





Typical postprandial scenes around my plate of jaouza in the only restaurant of a small roadside town. What is on the pictures: little Curious George at my lunch table, his parents pointing at the classic "are you married" in my Rough Guide glossary, and the girls of the town probably with similar questions behind the plastic curtain.

What is equally there, but not on the pictures: a bunch of the town's bullies (usually the ones in camouflage pants with dark sunglasses) rush in and out, bring their friends over to my lunch table, shout "hello" in my ear, louder every time, toss my Rough Giude and my camera around and shove a cigarette up my mouth. Eventually they shuffle back outside, to 'check out my bike'. Thumbs (with ferocious nails) go into my tires to check the pressure, hands like spades grab the frame, test the brakes, shift the gears. How many times I started biking and rattled along for a stretch because someone had shifted my gears while I was eating or taking a break?

Traveling in China, especially alone and without basics of Mandarin, is an alienating experience. The notion of privacy - respect for other's goods and personal space - is so different here from any culture I've visited before.





Even though I 've come down from the more fragile highland ecosystem and even though I've returned to the valleys of traditionally inhabited China, still I find some of the most striking evidence of warfare between the Chinese authorities and the encroaching soil degradation here, in the mountainous area around Chifeng.

Not surprizingly, these valleys form the setting for Bruce Marcot's alarming story I read while planning the trip. Even my fairly dated aviation maps mention 'distorted surface'.

The desertification situation on the higher sections of the Mongolian plateau I crossed a couple of weeks ago can be described as a battle at the forefront of Chinese agricultural colonization. A recently immigrated population of farmers tries to eek a living out of the Inner Mongolian highlands. The struggle is tough, as the highlands are arid and cold, and yield marginal crops. At the same time, the fragile soil is degrading rapidly, the sands are encroaching. Both colonization (cardboard settlements, croplands, tourist villages) and protection measures (trees and shrubs) are implemented in a linear pattern, lining the main arteries (highways, train tracks) across the highlands.

In the valleys of Chifeng Prefecture, however, the problem seems to have an extra dimension. Almost literally: lines becoming surfaces. To a certain extent, the desertification problem seems more acute here. As more considerable short term losses in cropland are to be feared for the government, remediation measures have been equally more vast in comparison to what I saw on the highlands.

Both disruption of the surface (huge sand dunes in the distance, dried out rivers, erosion of entire hillsides) and remediation (valleys chockful of saplings, alternating strips of agricultural fields and protective trees) occur on a vaster scale, rather in surfaces than in lines. Virutally everywhere in Chifeng Prefecture, signs of China’s environmental warfare are visible.



sand dunes in the distance



dried out river



saplings



reforested valleys


Biking towards Chifeng, thinking about national environmental policies for a country as big as China, about protection walls and inward-looking dynasties, wondering whether man in fact can be stronger than nature, I realize mile by mile that combatting desertification in China doesn't equal trying to find a balance between the forces of the environment and human occupation.

It means to fence off areas of economical accumulation, if possible steadily expand them. It means affirmatively fighting the increasingly exhausted environment, unilaterally, wihtout negociation.

A Chinese farmer believes the solution for the soil degradation crisis will have to be found in the human ingenuity. "A lot of farm produce that we have today is undesirable for the environment... Desertification will worsen and we will have to rely more on fertilisers due to soil degradation," he says.



a sign indicating a tree nursery


Even though they are green, the trees are as much part of the strategic network of cultivation as railways, fences, factories, imported farmers. The trees are not intended to replace cleared forests, not even to help grasslands to recover (how would trees manage to do that anyway?), but to protect the human footprint on the grassland soil they enclose.



the fence and the line of trees - loyal companions



depletion of water resources by irrigation and overpumping cause more sandy areas as the topography drops



a roadside ad for sand dune entertainment (probably in combination with Mongolian food)



a rough estimate - 85% of the 2000 km of roads I biked were lined wiith trees


Jan
October 2004