Jialuhe watershed, Baijiapan region


Terrace plots are added on this hilltop with World Bank assistance. (right) On the foreground are some experimental plots used to try out different varieties of grass and shrub for their survivability. Many of them are introduced from aboard. As far as I can tell, none seems to survive the harsh climate here. People here probably stick with the local variety of purple-flower alfalfa. However Chinese are once greatly excited by some strains of seabuckthorn introduced from Russia. Special departments have been created to adopt it.

The region is some badly dissected by gullies that going from one hilltop to another is a demonstration of non-Euclidean geometry.

Picture source: George Leung 1997