PHOTOGRAPHER: Fritz Hoffmann
ASSIGNMENT: China portfolio
LOCATION: Inner Mongolia, China
DATE: August 9, 2006
Time: 16:00, August 9, 2006

While helping her neighbor Wang Yian cut grass, Yang Xiaoyan, 30, pauses at a hint of a rare rain approaching through the sand hills that surround the meadow in the center of the Tenggeli desert in Inner Mongolia. Most of the Han living in the area moved to the Tenggeli Desert from Minqin County, Gansu, in 1960 to escape the famine caused by the Great Leap Forward.

Herder Wang Yian says: â??Ã?úThe big sand mountain in front of the house doesnâ??Ã?ôt seem to be moving but the smaller sand dunes are coming closer and closer to the house every year. Earlier this year the local government (Luanjingtan Relocation Development Zone) came to my home and told us that weâ??Ã?ôd be relocated to Luanjiangtan but didnâ??Ã?ôt say exactly when. We built this house 20 years ago; the former house has already been buried by sand, which is not far from here. This place will sooner or later be buried by sand too. The climate is getting drier and drier each year. The last time it rained was on July 14th, which was the only rain weâ??Ã?ôve had this summer, and only four-fingers deep (a local method of measuring rain fall scale, which indicates that the water has saturated the sand by four fingers deep).

“I havenâ??Ã?ôt heard of the greenhouse effect, whether it rains or not depends on the heaven. But I was educated by Chairman Mao’s theory that man must defeat nature. How can the climate be drier and drier? The alkaline lake (where the meadow is) would only get surface water in the spring, from March to May, and the dry season starts in June and through out the rest of the year. We used to be nomads, and the government contracted us with a piece of meadow, and relocated other people so that each of the family still live here has enough grassland to support herding. I have 100mu (about 7 hectors) of meadow, which supports 400 sheep and 80 camels. If the rain is good