Page 115 - EarthHeroes

The wind battered Yuzhen and knocked her to the ground. She grabbed
the spade she had dropped and used it to pull herself up. The air was full of swirling sand that filled her nostrils and stung her eyes. The desert had all but disappeared in a brown haze, but she could just about make out the doorway 20 metres ahead. Struggling to stand, she staggered through the storm until she was at her front door and then banged on it, shouting above the howling gale. Her husband flung the door open and, with a look of relief on his face, pulled her inside.
It was 1986, and 20-year-old Yin Yuzhen had been caught in a sandstorm
while planting trees near her home in Jinbei Tang, Wushenqi, in northern China. Yuzhen lived on the edge of the Mu Us Desert – a wild, desolate place of endless sand. Aged just 19, she had moved there from neighbouring Shaanxi province after an arranged marriage to her husband, Bai Wanxiang, who had grown up in Jinbei Tang. It was the first time Yuzhen had left her home village,
a place she had always loved for its green fields and wild flowers, and she had been shocked to find that her new home was a dwelling in the desert, dug out of a slope, half buried in the sand. Yuzhen had to bend over to go inside, where the floor was carpeted with grass and deadwood.
Yuzhen had never experienced such a hostile environment. On sunny days, the shining sand hurt her eyes, while on others the wind was so strong she was afraid it would blow her away. Sandstorms could last for a whole month and there was the constant threat of dunes engulfing their home. Every day, after the winds had stopped, Yuzhen and her husband would have to shovel away the hard-packed sand from outside their door so their house would not be buried as some other homes had been. Desertification – where fertile land becomes desert – is a huge problem in China and all over the world. Caused largely by global warming and over-grazing of farm animals, it reduces the land on which crops can be grown for food. In China, it also causes dangerous clouds of dust
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