Bao Xiulan, a woman taking the lead to combat sand and poverty

Bao Xiulan, a woman living in Baotou village, Naiman Banner, has devoted herself to fighting sandification through planting desert-tolerant trees over the past two decades, which not only changes the local earth situation and environment but also allows her to make a living on the grassland.

“This was the only tree around here before I started to plant trees to control sandification,” Bao pointed to an old and broken elm to the reporter. “In the past, there were not many trees in the village, and it was all sandy.”

“For almost eight months in a year, a layer of plastic was added to windows of villagers’ houses to prevent sand from coming in,” Bao stood in front of her house and looked out at the green scenery, telling of the past. 

The village Bao lives in is situated in the hinterland of Horqin sandy area in Tongliao, Inner Mongolia autonomous region. In the 1990s, winds brought sand here which could bury villagers’ houses and it made it difficult to raise cattle and sheep, let alone farming. 

To survive, you have to plant trees to control the sand. At that time, there weren’t proper roads leading to the outside. Bao and her husband used horses and camels as vehicles to go through the sand to buy seedlings and saplings more than 20 kilometers away. It usually took them a day to make the round trip.

Planting trees in the sandy areas is not easy, and the survival rate of these trees is not that high. Some people in the village also questioned how they could earn a living by combating desertification.

In fact, Bao has greened more than 1,800 hectares of sandy land for more than 20 years. The grassland has become better and more cattle and sheep could be raised.

Today, Bao’s annual income is more than 300,000 yuan ($45,000). Under her leadership, Baotou villagers also began to plant trees to control sand and protect grassland. 

As the ecology improved, the number of local cattle and sheep farming also improved. Through family breeding in sheds, in 2017, the village raised more than 2,700 cattles and over 2,200 sheeps, with a per capita net income of nearly 10,000 yuan.

Bao Xiulan looks at a broken elm in Baotou village, Baiyintala town, Naiman Banner, Tongliao, Inner Mongolia on July 6. [Photo/Xinhua]