Shelterbelt

“The shelterbelts here," explained 53-year-old Ma Shoushou, head of the Bayannur League sand-protection station, “are only part of a great network of shelterbelts planted in 320 counties and banners stretching over 11 provinces and autonomous regions in China’s north, northeast and northwest.

And then the engines shifted up a note and we began to descend, coming in over a wide plain carved into geometric shapes by lines of dark shelterbelt and long straight roads with their ant hordes of cars and trucks.

Now derelict, it is surrounded by a shelterbelt of ancient sycamore trees.