Despising Springtime:
China’s Huang Sha
HKIS Middle School, Cameron Su, Fiction Group 3
Prologue
Winds bellow, vacuuming up layers of precious topsoil as well as superfine particulates composed
of every variety. Monstrous, thick blazes of sandstorms arrive as I stand heroically with my spade,
albeit helpless to the fury of the pummeling annual ritual of Huang Sha [Yellow Sands].
“
Wǒ de tiān
[My heavens]!” I screech, nearly on my last gasps after toiling throughout the day.
Using my frayed handkerchief, I shield my eyes from the airborne sand and topsoil pounding
every pore of my face. Every spring, the seasonal winds pick up sand and soils in Mongolia,
summarily releasing them onto the semi-arid regions eastward and southward, even as far as
Korea and Japan. Huang Sha conceals grasslands and destroys farmland, including mine and all
of my neighbors. No one is impenetrable.
“Where are all my crops?” I try to weep but can’t as my tear ducts are dry. Plodding through my
native grounds, I dig through the sand with my ancient garden spade, passed down from Father.
Huairou District, just 50 kilometers north of Beijing, China. The ever-predictable Huang Sha
arrives. It is not a debut but an encore performance.
Dusk beckons as the afternoon sun, invisible to the strongest of telescopes, is obliterated by
the sandstorms.
“Whoosh!” Winds pick up again. My heart stutters, bit by bit, as I attempt to plunge my
garden spade through the dense sand, which smothers my seedlings. “Clink!” the spade comes in
contact with what seems to be a large, stubborn rock.
“What could it be?” I tell myself, repeatedly thrashing the solid object underneath. I dig
deeper, and deeper.
Lo and behold, it was the road which traversed my farm.
Huairou Beijing, China. April 29, 2038. Sandstorms become worse than ever before. The
Huairou Bureau of Agriculture has now shifted its policy of assisting farmers by utilizing
agricultural cooperatives to replace collective farming. Instead of farming collectives based upon
Communist teachings, the State now favored farming on an industrial scale. Farms now mimicked
factory lines. These enterprises employed not farmers, who know about weather patterns, crop
rotations and the like. Instead, these large businesses relied upon hundreds of workers, who only
plant and harvest.
Whereas individual farming plots once populated rural lands in China, the Central
Government has decided to implement greenhouse-based farming, operated by commercial
operations. This pilot policy was instituted in Northeast China first, as it is the most susceptible to
incursions from Huang Sha.
But there are some holdouts, who refused to sell off their ancient lands.
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