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Media group awed at one man's ability to transform a desert into an oasis

By Du Juan | seeningxia.com | Updated: June 28, 2022

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Tang Ximing, head of Zhongwei sand stabilization tree farm, shows how to make a straw checkerboard on a dune at Shapotou in Zhongwei on Monday morning. [Photo provided to seeningxia.com]

"Wow...," a media group surrounding Tang Ximing murmured, while carefully looking at him show how to make a straw checkerboard on a dune at Shapotou in Zhongwei, a northwestern Chinese city, on Monday morning.

It's not the way he made straw checkerboards that amazed the people there so much, but the precision with which he intuitively did it -- the checkerboard made under his foot is exactly one meter on each side as if he had measured it.

This reminds me of a phrase that went viral during Beijing Winter Olympics this year: "My eyes are like a ruler". This saying captures how a professional knows anything and can treat it just like a tool. This concept applies to Tang's 30 years of devotion to fighting desertification, which made Tang know everything about straw checkerboards.

"The length of straws should be no shorter than 60 centimeters," Tang continued. "Double it over, then plant it in the sand down to about 10 to 15 centimeters, and leave the rest in the air."

"Don't make the bundle of straws too thick, or it will be difficult to tuck it under the sand," added Tang, demonstrating to media members from "A Date with China" how to make straw checkerboards using a special tool.

Zhongwei, located in the mid-west of Ningxia Hui autonomous region, is at the southeast border of the Tengger Desert, China's fourth-largest desert.

Zhongwei has a total land area of 17,000 square kilometers and a desert area of 3,740 square kilometers. The city was one of the regions with the most severe blown-sand disasters in Chinese history.

The city's residents, including Tang, then created the straw-checkerboard method to control sand.

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Tang Ximing, head of Zhongwei sand stabilization tree farm, shows how to make a straw checkerboard on a dune at Shapotou in Zhongwei on Monday morning. [Photo provided to seeningxia.com]

Tang is head of Zhongwei sand stabilization tree farm. One of his achievements is a seeding machine that can plant seeds in deserts with a higher survival rate and lower labor costs.

After more than 60 years of hard work, Zhongwei has built ecological protection forests and ecological economic forests, developed featured agriculture and developed photovoltaic industry and desert tourism, realizing the major changes that come with decreasing the size of the desert and turning it into an oasis.

Zhongwei has controlled about 1.5 million mu (100,000 hectares) of the desert, making the Tengger Desert retreat by 25 kilometers, according to local government data.

Zhongwei sand stabilization tree farm was awarded the title of "Global 500 Roll of Honor for Environmental Achievement" by the United Nations in 1994, thanks to the world-famous straw-checkerboard method.

"A Date with China" 2022 international media tour kicked off in Northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region on Saturday.

The tour will take foreign media correspondents in China, foreign internet celebrities in China and Chinese journalists to experience a digital, beautiful and happy China. "A Date with China" in 2022 is a three-leg media tour. The first leg includes Ningxia Hui autonomous region and Anhui province.