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Xilinhot—an Inner Mongolian outpost of 177,000 residents, separated from Beijing by a 12-hour train ride—is at the center of the Xilin Gol Grassland, one of China’s largest prairies and livestock production regions. The north’s coal mines, trucks, and power plants of Inner Mongolia are representative of the nation’s coal dependency, a lifeline with an insatiable thirst for water.
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Along the vast frozen grasslands, 23-year-old Wu Yun and her father, Bao Zhu, tend their herd of sheep and cattle. Just over the ridge, the northern city of Xilinhot is booming as the coal industry expands. But it will take a lot of water to feed both the city and the mining.
Read more ...Circle of Blue revisits sea of dying grass and blowing sand in northern China.
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By Eric Daigh
Circle of Blue
KDianhua Paper Mill discharged 2.5 million tons of untreated industrial wastewater every year into a lagoon that ruptured near an Inner Mongolian village, killing sheep, sickening people, and damaging grasslands. A group of herders brought suit and won a small settlement. The contamination persists.
By Eric Daigh
Circle of Blue
Changes in patterns of precipitation in an already parched region, leading to severe shortages of freshwater, plays an integral role in the spread of desertification in China’s Inner Mongolia. But agreeing on the underlying socioeconomic drivers and solving the problems have fostered divisions between the government and its people.
By Eric Daigh
Circle of Blue
The blowing sand in Inner Mongolia is more evidence of the consequences of the irrational duel China fights daily as it promotes rapid industrial development while exposing land, water, communities, and people to levels of pollution, waste, and resource diminishment never before seen on the planet.
By Eric Daigh
Circle of Blue
Traditional nomadic culture on the steppes of Inner Mongolia was defined by the insistence of wind, herding, and the search for water. A ballad, performed by Maidar, celebrates what’s left: Air that is rarely still and great expanses of tall grass unfurling like a great waving sea beneath surpassingly huge skies.
