Xinjiang's Makit county: Desert turns green

When you arrive at Makit county, it's very hard to imagine the place was covered with sand just some years ago.

Makit county, in Kashgar prefecture of Northwest China's Xinjiang autonomous region, surrounded by sand on three sides, is the only county in the country to embed itself in the desert.

The county is located in the eastern part of Kashgar on the southwestern edge of the Taklimakan Desert, the largest desert in China and the second-largest one in the world. The ecological environment is very fragile, as the desert area accounts for 90 percent of the county's total area.

Abula Amat, a 77-year-old villager, remembers the past situations clearly. "When I was young, the pots and bowls in the kitchen were full of sands after a sandstorm, and half of the house could be buried."

In 2012, the project of planting a million mu (667 square kilometers) of wind-proof and sand-fixing ecological forests was launched. Currently, a total of 340,000 mu of ecological forests have been completed, significantly improving the ecological environment here.

The number of sandy and dusty days in Makit county has dropped from 106 in 2010 to 40 in 2018. Annual rainfall has increased from 53.6 mm in 2010 to 109.6 mm currently.