Planting hope in the sands

As spring winds sweep across the Gobi Desert in Northwest China, thousands of young people are heading into the sands with shovels, saplings and a shared determination to hold back the desert from March to May. It has become an unexpected destination for many Chinese Gen-Zers, not for sightseeing, but for planting trees and searching for a sense of purpose.

Over the past three years, more than 100,000 volunteer visits from across the country have helped restore about 1,000 hectares of desert through large-scale tree planting and sand-control efforts.

This year alone, more than 40,000 volunteers have traveled to Minqin county in Gansu province, which is surrounded by China's third and fourth largest deserts, the Badain Jaran and the Tengger. For many of them, the journey began with an online invitation: "Come to Minqin and plant a tree".

Once known for its severe desertification, Minqin has long stood on the front line of China's battle against encroaching sands.

Since the 1950s, generations of locals have planted straw checkerboards, and drought-resistant shrubs such as suosuo to stabilize shifting dunes.

Despite these efforts, by the late 1990s, desert covered 94.5 percent of the county. Local people once described life there with a bitter saying: "Sand climbs the walls, donkeys climb onto rooftops, and farmland is abandoned."

The latest statistics show the desertification rate in Minqin at 88.18 percent. The struggle against the desert is attracting new generations. Among them is Zhong Lin, 28, who has posted popular videos of planting trees online.