In 1985, a 19 year old girl was forced to marry into the desert, escaped many times without success,

Mondo Social Updated on 2024-03-06

"I don't represent individuals, I represent the tens of millions of desertification control people in China, and our wish is the same as the will of the General Assembly, which is to prevent deserts and let mankind live a better life. ”

This is the speech delivered by Yin Yuzhen, the representative of China, at the podium of the United Nations Forum on "Desert Prevention and Poverty Alleviation" in September 2017.

Who would have thought that this female expert who once turned the desert into an oasis was originally a rural woman who was forced to marry into Inner Mongolia, and what happened behind the transformation from a rural girl with little education to an international person who appeared at the United Nations?

In 1985, this was the day Yin Yuzhen got married, at this time Yin Yuzhen was only 19 years old, at the age when many girls of the same age were still in college, Yin Yuzhen had already married a wife, and her husband's name was Bai Wanxiang, an old man who looked grizzled, and this marriage was not Yin Yuzhen's active choice, but the result of her father's compulsion.

Yin Yuzhen was quite resistant to this relationship at first, and the reason why her father did this was also a confused account.

There is a desert area in Inner Mongolia called the Mu Us Desert, not to mention that outsiders are easy to get lost here, even the locals often encounter the phenomenon of getting lost, and Yin Yuzhen's father encountered this kind of thing when he was young. But fortunately, when he got lost in the desert, he was rescued by a well-wisher, who was Bai Wanxiang's father.

Yin Yuzhen's father was very grateful for Bai Wanxiang's father's life-saving grace, so the two bowed on the spot. Because Bai Wanxiang's family is relatively poor, Bai Wanxiang is very old and has not married. Yin Yuzhen's father saw the face of his sworn brother, so he patted his heart and said that he wanted to marry his daughter to Bai Wanxiang to repay the brotherly love of the year.

In this way, Yin Yuzhen became the daughter-in-law of the Bai family, and Bai Wanxiang's family is indeed a little poor, not only is the place small, but also located in the wind and sand belt, in a humid environment, surrounded by all kinds of poisonous insects, such as centipedes, spiders, etc., such a living environment obviously does not meet Yin Yuzhen's needs for mate selection, so not long after marrying, Yin Yuzhen began to plan how to escape.

Although the idea is good, it is difficult to practice, the geographical environment of the Mu Us Desert is not much better than that of Shaanxi, and it is also constantly windy and sparsely populated all year round, even if Yin Yuzhen successfully leaves Bai Wanxiang's home, how to survive in the desert is a problem, not to mention that she can't even find the road.

Yin Yuzhen has planned countless plans to run away from home, and has also tried to walk alone in the desert, but in the face of the harsh living environment, she finally had to give up. But the most painful thing after getting married is not Yin Yuzhen, but Yin Yuzhen's father.

One day, Yin Yuzhen's father came to Bai Wanxiang's house to visit Yin Yuzhen, and was startled by Yin Yuzhen's tortured appearance at first sight. After hearing that his daughter often sought death at home, Yin Yuzhen's father also regretted it a little, and constantly reflected in his heart, in order to repay the favor, but he lost his daughter's life, is it worth it? After returning home, his father soon fell seriously ill due to guilt, and then died.

It is said that Yin Yuzhen was her father who asked her to marry Bai Wanxiang in order to repay her kindness, and now that her father is dead, Yin Yuzhen should be able to choose to leave, but Yin Yuzhen has a strong personality, and Jingbian County is not big, and the population is at best at the level of villages and towns. Yin Yuzhen is worried that after she goes back alone, her family will be talked about by the neighbors, saying that she is ungrateful as a daughter.

After thinking about it again, Yin Yuzhen decided to stay in the Mu Us Desert and let herself live her life. But living in the wind and sand for many years is not so easy, so Yin Yuzhen decided to change this area and turn the vast desert into an oasis, as long as there is less wind and sand, her life can be better.

At the beginning, Yin Yuzhen didn't know how to manage the desert, and just wanted to try to see if she could grow some crops in the desert, but the crops she bought from other places were either unsuitable for water and soil, or buried by wind and sand, and all of them basically died.

Seeing that agriculture could not be done, Yin Yuzhen decided to start with sand control, and the best way to resist the wind and sand is to plant trees, so she told her husband her ideas, Bai Wanxiang has always been obedient to Yin Yuzhen, I heard that she was going to do sand control work at home, without saying a word, she sold the lame sheep at home, and bought 600 saplings from other places.

However, sand control work is not so easy to do, and without scientific planning, the slightest mistake will be doomed.

Because she didn't know how to plant trees in the desert, the 600 saplings that Yin Yuzhen bought back, even though they had been planted carefully, were completely destroyed by a sandstorm.

Seeing that these little saplings had just grown up and were completely destroyed, Yin Yuzhen's heart didn't mention how painful it was, but the huge failure did not completely defeat Yin Yuzhen, she began to collect information, constantly looking for saplings that could be planted in the desert. But saplings were not a bargain in the last century, and in order to get enough money, Yin Yuzhen had to sell a few sheep in the family, and at the same time, Bai Wanxiang was also desperately looking for work in other places to scrape together money to buy saplings for Yin Yuzhen.

The so-called enlightened people have a lot of help, and Yin Yuzhen's deeds of working hard to control desertification soon spread among the people, and in the era of underdeveloped information, it even spread abroad, and a person named Sai Kowski of the American Freedom Association heard about Yin Yuzhen's deeds. Curious, he traveled thousands of miles to Yin Yuzhen's woodland, and after seeing her efforts to control desertification, he personally funded her with $5,000. There is also a retired expert Chen Shuqin who wants to breed several trees in Yin Yuzhen's woodland as a sample for aerospace breeding in the future.

In decades of sand control work, Yin Yuzhen tried to plant more than 1,000 different types of saplings, with the efforts of Yin Yuzhen and her husband, most of these saplings survived, Yin Yuzhen has also accumulated a wealth of sand control breeding work, such as planting trees to prevent wind first, planting a solid piece, etc., these knowledge often used in desert sand control is the experience of Yin Yuzhen and Bai Wanxiang.

Under their leadership, the residents of Yin Yuzhen's area not only learned how to prevent and control desertification, but also started a rose garden, manufacturing rose essential oil and other modern agriculture, and successfully embarked on the road of poverty alleviation and prosperity.

With this credit, Yin Yuzhen was elected as one of the top ten outstanding women in the country in 2002, and in 2023, she became the president of the Forestry Industry Association of Ordos City, which are all affirmations of her decades of achievements in desertification control.

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