Hearing About Inner Mongolia ③: The Great Desert, Like Snow

Yellow sands stretch endlessly, sand dunes linked together, waves like ripples, swaying with the wind. You'll never be able to see two identical sand dunes, and every change will make you marvel at the wonders of nature's creation, and you'll also recall Li He's verses from the Tang Dynasty – 'Great desert sand like snow, Yellow River moon like a hook'

Speaking of deserts, you'll surely think of the vast deserts. Indeed, the desert is one of the main types of deserts, but besides deserts, there are also gravel deserts, saline deserts, sticky deserts, and rocky deserts. Since we're talking about 'vast' deserts, what's the total area of Inner Mongolia deserts? The total area of Inner Mongolia deserts reaches 303,000 square kilometers, accounting for 1/4 of the total land area of the region. The most famous of these are the five great deserts, which are Bayan Taijin Desert in Alxa League, Tengger Desert, Ulaanbel and Shiliang Desert in Alxa League and Bainganur City, Wularend Desert in Ordos City, Kubuqi Desert.

Pictures of the Bayan Taijin Desert. New China News Agency

'Kubuqi' means 'bow string' in Mongolian. The Kubuqi Desert is located in the Yellow River basin, like a string hanging on the Yellow River, hence its name 'Kubuqi'. The Kubuqi Desert has an area of 186,000 square kilometers, and is the closest desert to Beijing. Yellow sandstorms have rolled across Beijing's skies more than once, and Kubuqi people talk about sand color constantly. After nearly 30 years of arduous desert reclamation, significant progress has been made, and the Kubuqi Desert reclamation has been hailed as a 'model for global desert reclamation' by the United Nations, which has made people recognize the Kubuqi Desert again.