Couples shield desert highway in Xinjiang from shifting sands
Print Edition
THE desert is still quiet at 8am, but Xiao Hong and his wife, Huang Zhongtao, have already started the water pump to irrigate this dry stretch of earth.
Deep in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the Taklamakan Desert is known as the “sea of death” across China. In the Uygur language, its name means “go in and you won’t come out.”
Xiao and Huang, maintenance workers at Well House No. 1, are among nearly 100 couples who tend to plants year-round along the Taklamakan Desert Highway to prevent the shifting sand from burying the key cross-desert artery.
When construction on the highway was completed in 1995, reed grids and fences were installed along uninhabited stretches of the highway to hold the sand in place. However, as the years passed, most of the grids and fences started to fail, exposing the highway to dangerous shifting dunes.
Starting in 2003, 109 wells were dug along the highway every 4 kilometers to pump water for bushes and other vegetation to block the wind and keep the sand in place.
The well houses in the desert have become the key to survival for the 3,000-hectare “green corridor.”
By the time Huang and Xiao finished inspecting the pipes and plants, it was already past 10am. Xiao wrote down notes about irrigation and water volume in a logbook, while Huang prepared breakfast.
The couple lives in a 10-square-meter bungalow adjacent to the noisy generator and pump room.
According to Xiao’s logbook, sandstorms and rain have been more frequent this year than before. That means more mosquitos.
“Desert mosquitos are much fiercer,” said Huang, pointing at the empty cans of insecticide that fill the windowsill. “Even house flies here can bite the skin until it bleeds.”
Mosquitos have never been a primary concern for Zheng Xinxue and Li Juying at Well House No. 30. Instead their thoughts are with their grandchildren in central Henan Province, some 3,000km away.
Zheng and Li, both in their sixties, glance at a cellphone displaying the smiling faces of their grandson and granddaughter whenever they miss the children.
Li said they will ask for leave next month, when irrigation stops due to the cold. Their trip home will take several days. Li recalled a previous trip, when her feet were swollen after sitting on a train for days.
“I definitely still want to go back,” Li, 52, said. “We miss home, but the trip has scared us off almost every year.”
Zeng Dezhang and Wang Huirong at Well House No. 8 are experts in tough journeys. The couple from the southwestern province of Sichuan has been stationed here since 2006. The last time their son came to visit was four years ago.
Last year before Spring Festival, they hitchhiked to the nearest town, several hundred kilometers away, before they could catch a bus to a train station in the southern Xinjiang city of Korla. From there they took a train to northwest Shaanxi Province and transferred to another train headed south to Chengdu, capital of Sichuan.
But it was not over. They still had to take a bus to their hometown in Weiyuan County. Four days of their precious holiday had been spent on the road, and another four days would be needed for the return trip.
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