Creating a Desert in China
This oasis, in the Tengger Desert, is completely surrounded by sand, and has been inhabited for centuries by ethnic Mongol herding families, who raise sheep, goats, camels, and cattle.
Photographer: James Whitlow Delano/BloombergChaogetu, who like many Mongols has only one name, still lives in the house where he was born, a mud-walled three-room shack in a small oasis of Inner Mongolia’s Tengger Desert. He cooks over a wood stove and has a one-month-old lamb tethered in his living room to protect it from foxes and eagles. Like his parents, grandparents, and generations before him, the sun-beaten herder sees his fortunes rise and fall with his livestock—5 camels, 12 cows, and about 500 sheep and goats.
The small lakes dotting this arid region of China have been drying up as the desert grows ever bigger. The sandstorms that roll across the land every spring before heading to far-off Beijing and Tianjin have become more frequent. Clouds of stinging grit choke the lungs and darken the skies for as many as three days at a time, forcing Chaogetu to stay inside and taking a toll on his livestock.