Broadcasting Time: 2006-05-01

On the morning of April 17, Beijing citizens dragged themselves out of bed for the start of another week's work. Drawing back their curtains, they could hardly believe the scene present before them. Almost overnight, the city had been coated in thick dust, somewhat similar in appearance to a blanket of yellow snow.
However, although this was admittedly the worst incident yet, Beijingers have suffered from about a dozen dust storms over the last month or two. Indeed, this year's spring has been notable for extremely sandy weather conditions in the city.

On the other hand, the dust in Beijing is just small a few grains of sand when compared to the storms which have afflicted north and northwestern China. Just one example of the disruption caused by recent weather conditions should illustrate this point. A train traveling from Xinjiang to Beijing was approaching the border of Xinjiang and Gansu Province, when a sudden sand storm smashed every window on the north side of the train, causing numerous injuries, although fortunately, no fatalities. After a delay of 33 hours, the train finally limped into Beijing West Railway Station, looking extremely the worse for wear.
Sand storms such as this, which sweep through north China, originate from both home and abroad, in the former case, especially from Inner Mongolia. So today, let's follow our reporter Shen Ting, as he takes a long journey to the western part of Inner Mongolia, and searches for the source of the sand which harasses so much of China every spring.

Reporter: The Alashan Grand Desert is located at the westernmost point of Inner Mongolia. Amazingly, as soon as we arrived in the region, we were buffered by a fierce sand storm. As the wind increased in strength, huge gusts of sand were flung into the air, transforming the color of the sky from blue to yellow. On several occasions, our car could barely move forward, as a result of such bad visibility.

This sudden attack was our first reminder of nature's power, while what we saw a little later gave us an even greater shock. In a place known by the locals as the Weird Woods, the once-abundant poplars have all died, with some still standing forlornly, some ripped from their roots, and other scattered in broken pieces. We were told that these trees did not die from drought, but rather from a particularly vicious sand storm. Moreover, this is not an uncommon incident - during another sand storm on May 20, 1998, more than 300,000 poplars were wrecked in the Alashan area.