Things about China: 28 of 100

Sand Storms

The sky grows dark. A whistling sound whips through the air. People shield their eyes and seek cover. This is the eleventh or twelfth time this year that the city of Beijing has been under attack. The capital of China has seen many wars in its history, but never one as harsh as this. The enemy? Sand.

Sandstorms (yes, like the ones in Star Wars and Dune) use to be very uncommon in China, but the deserts of Central Asia are growing and the future looks dim. The Gobi Desert is already the fifth largest desert in the world and each year a Delaware-sized chunk is added onto it. Every second, this desert edges closer and closer to Beijing.

Though some may think this a natural disaster, there isn’t much natural about it. The current desertification of China is attributed to the lack of precipitation which is attributed to the gargantuan amount of pollution that China is spewing out of its factories each year. There is so much pollution in China that ninety-nine percent of its population breathes air that is deemed not-safe by the European Union.

So as China’s skies grow smoggy, less rain falls, and China’s deserts grow bigger. It seems that in a decade’s time China will be as sandy as Tatooine. But wait! There is hope yet! The Chinese are not so quick to surrender. They have a war plan and that plan is called “The Great Green Wall of China”.

Yes, the Chinese are planting trees at alarming rate. The sixty-year tactic to combat the encroaching Gobi, includes an aerial-bombing of the enemy with seeds. A great forest now covers a half-million square kilometer area in northern China. It has quickly grown to be the largest artificial forest in the world!

But the battle is not over. Many of the planted trees have already perished due to disease, winter storms, and lack of water. As fast as trees are being planted, the desert is killing them off again. Many scientists think the tree planting is doing more harm than good. China is criticized for planting quantity, but not quality. Thus, the battle rages on.

So how will the war end? Will China be able to find a way to plant super-lab-grown-Ent-like-trees and save its lands? Will the desert overtake Beijing and turn its people into desert-dwellers? Will giant sandworms come out of the ground and eat all of the spice miners?

Personally, I have no predictions as to the outcome of all this sandblasting. I am going to be safe from the storms in Southern China. But I do have a battle plan of my own. I want to see Beijing, in all its glory, before it turns into the Mos Eisley Space Port (a wretched hive of scum and villainy) And if the deserts take it before I get there? Well that's OK, I've always wanted to live through a sandstorm.