Generations of locals in Ningxia had been suffering from a poor living environment, drought, and strong winds. After years of management, green has now become the representative color of Ningxia's ecology. In 1958, in order to prevent the first desert railway in China from being covered by in sand, local residents built a straw checkerboard, a method to stabilize the sand, through trial and error.
This accomplishment, dubbed the "Chinese Rubik's Cube", has now been widely applied at home and abroad. China has been fighting against sandstorms and desertification for at least 60 years