The Man Tames Desert and Makes Profit

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Inner Mongolia in northern China has five large deserts scattered from west to east across its vast land. The 45,000-square-kilometer Badanjilin Desert is the third largest desert, larger than Belgium. The sandy desertification in the area over past decades has seen the expansion of the desert. What makes it a little bit unique is its proximity to Beijing. Sand storms originating here can hit the Chinese capital in no time. Efforts to curb the desert expansion call for huge amounts of capital.

Wu Zishen, a native of Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, has created a miracle in fighting Badanjilin Desert. He has successfully planted 500,000 mu (about 33,000 hectares) of saxaul shrubs (scientific name haloxylon ammodendron) in the desert area. Moreover, he has used the roots of these flourishing miraculous desert plants to cultivate cistanche salsa, a very expensive herb used in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The saxaul shrubs he has planted in Badanjilin Desert doubly function as a gigantic herbal plantation and the plantation produces more than 10 billion yuan worth of cistanche salsa per year.

Though a native of Hohhot, Wu Zishen did not see deserts until 1994 when he was sent to do field studies in Naiman Banner, a state-level poverty-stricken region in Inner Mongolia. It was here that he ran into his first sand storm: the visibility was reduced to about two to three meters and he had difficulty getting out of the jeep and breathing.

In his visit to the deserts across Inner Mongolia, he learned that the best way to fight desertification is to plant desert plants such as saxaul, sympegma regelii, and Euphrates poplar. To plant these desert plants needed money. He didn’t have any for such a large-scale project.

Wu later quit his government job and began his business venture. In 2001, he decided to invest one million into a desert project to plant sophora alopecuroides, a plant from which alkaloids can be separated and extracted as material for high-end pharmaceuticals. At that time, the alkaloids of sophora alopecuroides were a major pharmaceutical export of China.

Wu drove across Inner Mongolia in search of the best base for his project. After many field studies and discussions with experts, he had an ideal desert for his ambitious project. The local government was most willing, assigning a 500,000-mu desert to Wu.

The infrastructure phase of the project was easy. Thousands of local workers soon built roads and houses and planted desert plants. But saxaul and sophora alopecuroides did not grow well as expected.

Local residents had long since used the saxaul woods as fuel. As the original saxaul woods had been gravely damaged, it was very difficult to plant Cistanche Salsa onto the roots of them. As camels feed on the leaves of newly planted saxaul woods but did not produce dung enough to provide nutrients, the saplings grew very slowly. What is more, rats were multiplying fast and becoming a headache.

Wu Zishen knew he was in trouble and he needed help badly. The help came in the form of a magic liquid that could be sprinkled onto leaves of the plants in his large desert plantation. The liquid was invented by Gao Jing, a senior engineer working for TCM garden in Alxa. Fifteen days after massive sprinkling, the plants in his plantation began to come back to life. The plantation flourished.

Saxaul plants are valuable to Wu Zishen mainly because they act as parent substance on which cistanche salsa grows. The saxaul plants in one mu (1/15 hectare) can produce over 300 kilograms of cistanche salsa which can sell for over 30,000 yuan.

As Wu’s plantation flourished, local herdsmen’s camel community flourished, too. Wu allows camels to feed on his saxaul woods. When top parts are eaten by camels, saxaul plants have stronger roots and well shaped roots are the best parent substance for cistanche salsa.

Today, Wu’s business is more than the plantation. Shortly after he started the plantation project, he began to build a three-star hotel in a nearby town called Aolunbulage. The 6,000-m2 hotel is part of Wu’s ambitious desert tourism. A nearby desert area is included in Alxa Desert National Geopark. A great valley there is regarded as a top-class tourism destination. People used to fear that the desert hotel built and operated by Wu would be a great waste and useless. Today, dramatically, it enjoys brisk business receiving tourists from all over the world. Tourists can see mirages twenty times a day, swim, and dine and wine at the hotel’s French restaurant. The TCM plantation, described as a desert miracle by many foreign media, is a huge attraction for overseas tourists.

Aolunbulage is now very prosperous. Wu has dreams about this town: he hopes to make it into a world-class tourism destination with a regular population of 20,000 to 30,000 residents.

Wu Zishen knows what he is doing. His company has grown into a conglomeration of 12 business subsidiaries and the total annual output of these subsidiaries tops 10 billion yuan. And he as a new blueprint: he dreams of developing 5 million mu of desert and turn it into China’s Silicon Valley in desert.

Wu Zishen’s Yongye International was listed in NASDAQ in the spring of 2009 and Yongye was recommended four times within the year by authoritative financial organizations in Wall Street. Wu Zishen himself has won numerous honors in China as a man who has successfully subdued desert and built successful desert businesses.