The Huangtu plateau, 300 kilometers west of Beijing, was formed by sand that was blown from the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts and deposited in layers over several million years.

The yellow, sandy soil, called loess, becomes as hard as concrete when dry, but turns powdery again when plowed.

Only 400 millimeters of rain fall each year on the plateau, which is over 1,000 meters above sea level. When the rain comes, it falls hard and only in limited areas, washing away the topsoil.

Since 1992, the Japanese citizens group Green Earth Network (GEN) has been cooperating with the Chinese Communist Party's local youth committee in planting trees on the region's bare mountains. Recently, I accompanied GEN members on a visit to the area.

We traveled through the hills of Zuoyun county in the west of Datong.

The potato fields lining the road had not been touched since the plants died of thirst. Kaoliang sorghum, a cornlike plant famous in the area for growing so tall that it provided an ideal hiding place for thieves in the old days, reached no higher than a meter. Sesame plants, whose seeds are used to make oil, were no more than a stumpy 10 centimeters high. The ground was dry and rough on the surface and hard as a rock beneath.

Smog clouds Ranzhou, one of China's most polluted cities.

Rainfall in Datong between January and June last year came to only 46.6 millimeters--barely more than 30 percent of the average precipitation for the period.

Desertification has advanced because trees have been cut down to make way for fields. In addition, underground water is drying up as the ground has no capacity to hold rain, even when it comes.

Koji Hashimoto, a 56-yearold photographer whose photos of the Huangtu plateau were published as a book by Toho Shuppan Inc., had a worrying tale to tell.

Wells near the hills in the coal-mining village of Nanshuitou dried up when villagers dug wells in lower locations for irrigation, Hashimoto said. The villagers, therefore, began drinking water they found in the mine.

They soon began to experience numbness in their hands and feet, and dogs that had drunk the water were unable to walk straight.

Local government officials began investigating the matter when Hashimoto brought it to their attention. The water was found to be highly polluted and the officials declared it unfit to drink. The villagers had no choice but to start buying water from distant villages.

GEN Secretary-General Kunio Takami, 53, spends more than 100 days a year in China, offering advice on planting trees.

Great Western Development Strategies area

In the organization's newsletter, he wrote: "We are sure there used to be forests in this area. According to government records, the percentage of land in Shanxi province that was forested was 50 percent before the Qin Dynasty, 40 percent during the Tang and Song dynasties, 30 percent during the Liao and Yuan dynasties, 10 percent during the Qing Dynasty and 2.4 percent when the People's Republic of China was established.

"The change was brought about by excessive cultivation to cater to the growing population, as well as by urbanization, refining of metals and china, deforestation and continous fighting."

Takami concludes: "There were forests before civilization. There has been desert since civilization. Datong is typical example of this phenomenon."

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(Editor's note: These stories originally appeared in Japanese on Dec. 27.)