
Desert transformation: county in Xinjiang finds prosperity in sands
By Jiang Yunlong, People’s Daily “As a child, my dream was to escape Makit and distance myself from the Taklimakan Desert,” recalled Reyhan Ehmet. Born in 2001 in Makit county, Kashgar prefecture in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, Reyhan remembers a childhood dominated by sandy landscapes. “Spring rarely brought greenery—instead, everything indoors and outdoors…