Fighting the Gobi.
The Lin Da Foreign Language Department was going to plant trees in the Gobi Desert, and I was invited.
I hadn’t packed much in the way of grubby clothes, so I wore jeans and a t-shirt I didn’t mind dirtying – then boarded the bus to discover I was the only person so casually dressed. Oh well, let them dirty their nice clothes.
Year by year the Gobi encroached on Beijing, laying waste to usable land. By planting trees the government prevented soil erosion and held the desert back. The cause itself didn’t mean much to me, but since I was new to Beijing, and since I was teaching at a forestry university that coordinated environmental projects like this one, I appreciated the opportunity to tag along. Besides, who doesn’t like trees? On the two-hour bus ride out I added this experience to the list of Things to Tell the Grandkids: their dear old gramps fought the voracious Gobi Desert – a bona fide Johnny Appleseed.
At a gate in the middle of desolate nowhere we picked up a guide, who directed our bus to a hillside of terraced dirt. I’d envisioned crowds working feverishly, backhoes, trucks full of saplings; the area was perfectly still. No noise, not even a breeze. Just crusty dirt.
A few rows of trees were already planted. Along one terrace we found a dozen bagged saplings and some shovels. Our guide invited us to the shovels to get started.
In minutes I finished my first planting, brushed off my hands, looked around. “Where are the other trees?”
“Good job,” the department chair told me. “That is all.”
“Aren’t there more trees to plant?”
“More?” He looked at me as if I were crazy. “The workers will plant more.”
Workers? I scanned the wasteland around us. No one.
One by one my colleagues finished, wiped their hands, clapped each other on the back. We marched to the bus.
So much for my brave battle against the desert. Somewhere on a hillside on the edge of the great Gobi, two hours out from Beijing, I dug a hole, plopped a sapling in it, and covered it with dirt. I’d expected a workday; I participated instead in a ceremonial gesture.
On the way home we celebrated our good work at an extravagant restaurant.
For which I was completely underdressed.
February 4, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Sounds like a ribbon cutting ceremony to me. So that’s why they were all in nice clothes … they know the Old Country Buffet was waiting for them after the “work day.”