URUMQI: For more than two decades, Chang Qing has dedicated her life to cultivating plants in the vast desert of northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. For the senior engineer at the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and also the designer of the Tazhong botanical garden, there is only a barren desert, not a barren life. Earlier in August 2003, as part of the efforts to keep the Taklimakan cross-desert highway unaffected by drifting sands and ensure its accessibility, a desert highway ecological protection shelterbelt project was launched. The Tazhong botanical garden, dedicated to nurturing sand-resistant, drought-resistant, and salt-alkali-tolerant plants, was also established alongside this project. –Agencies
