Ventu/Lucker

If I tell you seriously: this is a desert! You're sure to think you're talking nonsense!

But sorry. This is a fact.

Everyone knows that the Gurbantunggut Desert is the second largest desert in China. It is located on the southern edge of the Gurbantunggut Desert at the northern foot of the Tianshan Mountains, on the north bank of the Manas River, and belongs to the jurisdiction of the 121st Regiment of the Eighth Division of the Xinjiang Construction Corps. In the Hanhai desert 21 kilometers away from its regiment headquarters, there is a wine estate known as "the largest farm in China" and a lush forest farm. In the most beautiful late autumn season in Xinjiang, this desert eco-tourism scenic spot based on the manor has attracted the attention of many tourists with a golden ocean in the vast desert. It is the Junyan Desert Ecotourism Scenic Spot of the 7th Company of the 121st Regiment. The name of the scenic spot is a combination of the last letter of the names of its owners Han Jianjun and Jiang Haiyan.

Gurbantunggut means "a place where wild boars haunt" in Mongolian. It is not difficult to imagine that this place used to be a green land with lush vegetation and vitality. However, deforestation, overgrazing and other behaviors led to desertification of the local soil and a drop in groundwater levels. Gurbantunggut eventually evolved into the largest fixed and semi-fixed desert in China.

Han Jianjun and Jiang Haiyan, the couple who built an oasis in the Gurbantunggut Desert, are second-generation pure soldiers and native cotton farmers of the Bingtuan in Shihezi City.

In 1998, the 7th Company of the 121st Regiment where Han Jianjun and Jiang Haiyan belonged was restructured and coincided with the reform of forest rights. The couple decisively bought out 1,050 mu of wasteland and abandoned farmland, and started their entrepreneurial career in cotton cultivation.

Starting a business on a barren land, the couple Han Jianjun and Jiang Haiyan, who bought a bed with borrowed money eight years ago and got married, were not easy. The intrusion and blow of wind and sand made them fail six times. Until 2003, The more frustrated they became, the more courageous they made their first pot of gold in the desert. They realized that planting green and locking sand is a key step in order to really change the living environment.

Is it okay to plant trees on the edge of the desert desert? The brothers and sisters of the 7th company advised them not to take risks. Some people in the company even said: "Planting trees on the edge of the desert is simply crazy!"

However, the stubborn Han Jianjun and his wife used the money they earned from planting cotton for many years to try to plant 100 acres of poplar trees with water-saving drip irrigation technology. Unexpectedly, the survival rate of the trees was very high and the growth was very good. In the spring of the second year, they planted another 1,500 mu of poplars... With the support of the group farm, they planted 8,000 poplars every year, and successively planted more than 2,500 mu of poplars in the hinterland of the desert. After 20 years of hard work, they finally A 4,000-acre oasis was built in the ancient desert!

Driven by them, more and more foreigners and members of the Corps actively participated in the afforestation team. After more than 20 years of hard work, they have fed 800,000 poplars, protected more than 500,000 secondary desert plants, and turned 100,000 square kilometers of desert into an oasis!

Tens of thousands of acres of poplar trees have grown into shelter forests with a height of more than ten meters, which not only resisted the wind and sand in the sky, but also became a pleasing scenery. Therefore, Han Jianjun and his wife relied on tens of thousands of acres of poplar and Populus euphratica forests to vigorously develop the undergrowth economy.

The ecological farm is a small pastoral complex of them——

Primary production: Based on forest farms, alfalfa, purple peanuts, yams, and purple sweet potatoes are interplanted in the woodland.

Secondary production: Extending the industrial chain and product added value, not only processing organic agricultural and sideline products, but also using the unique climatic conditions to grow grapes on a large scale, making brand wines and selling them all over the country.

Tertiary industry: Use characteristic farms and wineries to develop tourism and other service industries.

Today, the ecological environment on the southern edge of the Gurbantunggut Desert and on the north bank of the Manas River has not only been greatly improved, but has also become the "Song of Ice and Fire" in the desert—hundreds of acres of gerbera flowers and nearly ten thousand Mu forest sea, surrounded by a vast sand sea, forming a unique landscape of "half sea water and half flame".

At present, the Junyan Desert Ecotourism Area is already a national AAAA-level scenic spot, and Han Jianjun and his wife were also rated as "National Rural Tourism Model Households".

On November 30, 2018, the awarding ceremony of the 7th "Guangcai National Land Greening Contribution Award" jointly sponsored by the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, the State Forestry and Grassland Bureau, and the China Guangcai Business Promotion Association was held in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Xinjiang Construction The only winner of the Corps - Han Jianjun, chairman of Junyan Tourism Co., Ltd., won the "Green Great Wall Medal".

Under his influence and drive, more and more employees of the 121st regiment have devoted themselves to the desert greening project. One line connects the Tuoling Mengpo of the 150th regiment in the east, and the forest belt connecting the 135th regiment to Karamay in the west has achieved initial results. About 200,000 Populus euphratica plants have been protected. At present, the 121 regiment is fighting against the desert with the number of planting 30,000 to 50,000 trees per year. People enter the desert and retreat, and the oasis is patchy... Their action has drawn great attention from relevant state departments, the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, and the Corps. It is foreseeable that with the strong support of the state and local governments, the Gobi wilderness is gradually fading away in the place under the jurisdiction of the Eighth Division of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (that is, Shihezi City). Geography textbooks on "China's second largest desert" "Definitions are likely to be rewritten...